Come and sit with me in the dust Isaiah says. Ahhhh, now that is the Isaiah we have come to know and love over the last forty some chapters. Enough with these images of comfort and hope. So much of what I find compelling in Isaiah is his ability to name reality and offer hope. That is a hard line to walk. So often, I can slip into cynicism at the brokenness of our world. Or I find myself almost naively trying to harness the "power of positive thoughts," believing that happiness can be forged or forced. To see the brokenness for what it is and still say that there is a trace of God's grace, I admire that in Isaiah.
At this point in Isaiah most scholars believe he is writing as one in exile. The people have been uprooted and transplanted into Babylon and Isaiah along with them. The walls of their beloved city reduced to rumble, the temple Solomon built is now in smoldering ash, and Isaiah says sit in that ash and find God.
That is not exactly a passage I usually preach upon. Yet, I find it refreshingly honest and heartfelt. So often we try to explain away, justify, or even rationalize the brokenness and ash in our lives. This can be done through religious frame work of "God's will" or "God's plan". Or it can be done through humanist points of view, "Humans are broken and cause brokenness." Yet, where both fall short is our desire to understand or explain away pain or brokenness. Maybe pain and brokenness just are. Just are part of life. Just are part of walking around in this vessel and breathing in air. Just are.
Jesus experienced pain and brokenness within his life and upon the cross. Many theologians contend that it is in Jesus on the cross that God suffers. God suffers because of an unconditional and unceasing love. The parting of the Red Sea, the beautiful words of the Psalms, the words of accountability of the prophets, or countless other passages of the Hebrew Scriptures did not truly capture the hearts of the people the way God prayed those words would. And so God comes upon us, takes on human flesh - the incarnation. This is incredibly vulnerable. And why does God do this? To be 'at-one' with us. All these "reasons" people give about why Jesus had to suffer and die are called "atonement" (at-one-ment) theories. That is just it. There are all theories...just the ramblings of humans trying to make sense.
Maybe the brokenness and pain, the ash of life, the moments of exile when we feel like we are far from home or in a foreign land - maybe they should NOT make sense. Maybe we should NOT explain them away. The beginning of prayer is a sigh. A sigh that says words cannot every capture what is going on here. So, I turn not to words, but to ash.
In the beginning (Genesis 2) God took dust, made a being, and breathed life into that dust creature. Maybe sitting in the dust is not about being down in the dumps, but re-connecting with our humanity. Our beginnings. And while I don't think we need to go in search of those dust/ash moments...they seem to find us anyway...perhaps this is another way to look at them. Not as a trial or a test or something God gives us or something someone else caused us...just a dust moment that connects us back to a truth about being humans created in God's image. I don't think that solves anything, but it helps me sense a trace of God's grace in that moment. I pray for you too.
Blessings and peace!
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