Joy to the World!

           

          I meet a lot of people by accident.  It is just my lot, it seems.  Either I amble up to somebody and start talking (thinking they are somebody else) or people come and start talking to me, thinking I am somebody else.  At first, I was pretty put off by it, but before long, I’ve learned to roll with it.  I mean, we can all learn something from everybody and we should be open to new experiences every day.   Sometimes things go really well and we both walk away from the encounter having learned something or have just enjoyed each other’s company.   Sometimes, things go bad and then there is awkward moment that happens before one of us leaves.  But mostly, it’s ok. 

            I remember this one time, however, when I was NOT who was expected.  I was visiting somebody in the hospital and they clearly thought I was the priest to come and give them last rights.  Now, it’s important to know that this person was not anywhere close to dying.  They had come in for a relatively minor problem, but because I had been identified as a clergy member, they assumed that the end was near for them.  So, before I could stop her, out came a list of every sin she had committed…and we are not talking about minor ones here!  “Pastor, I had an affair with my neighbor and I never told my husband, I committed insurance fraud and I have a bunch of unpaid parking tickets!”  There was an awkward silence as she caught her breath, in which the doctor was able to say, “Ma’am….you are going to be fine.”  She looked at the doctor…then looked at me…then looked around the room at everybody who was in the room.  I have never seen anybody look redder.

            I was not who she expected…but then again, she was not in the situation she had thought.  I don’t know what ever happened to her, but I like to think that she took that moment as a real opportunity to look at her life, to rejoice in it and to change.

            Today’s Gospel reading is about expecting the right person.  Advent is about waiting with joy for the right person to come and to set all things new. 

            In our lesson, we find John the Baptist in jail.  John is one of those types of people we should probably expect to find in jail.  After all, he was bold in his proclamation and spoke the truth to power.  He even confronted Herod about his practices and that is why he wound up in jail. 

            Prison is a place of waiting…waiting either for release or for death.  German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who spent the last two years of his life in a prison cell, reflected that “A prison cell, in which one waits, hopes, does various unessential things, and is completely dependent on the fact that the door of freedom has to be opened from the outside, is not a bad picture of Advent.”[1]  But John is waiting and he is uncertain about his waiting around.  He is not sure what it is all about.

            John had initially pointed out Jesus from the crowd.  When Jesus emerged from the crowd to be baptized, John declared, “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29) He says this with such confidence and such boldness that today’s text has us do a double take.  John has now been waiting in prison for a long time, that he sends his messengers to Jesus and asks the question, “are you the one to come, or should we expect another?” 

            Talk about an embarrassing question to have asked.  Could you imagine the discussion that John’s disciples have on the way to meet Jesus?  “So…he boss seemed pretty sure of himself…” “Yeah…what do you think Jesus will say?”

            It might be easy for us to look down on John, but don’t we do the same thing and ask the very same question?  We might have a little bit more wiggle room…after all, it’s been two thousand years , and Jesus still has not returned.  It’s been two thousand years and those miracles have not been as often as they were when Jesus walked the earth.  It’ s been two thousand years and some of us might begin to wonder… “Jesus, are you the one to come? Or should we expect somebody else?” 

            We get tired of waiting for Jesus to appear…or we get embarrassed that we are called Christians.  Some have answered the question by saying that yes, we have been waiting for somebody else. Various names have been put into contention: Mohammed, Joseph Smith, Mary Eddy, and the Bab.  Others have said that we put our eggs in the wrong basket and that we have been failed by God.  Others have said that there is nothing special about Jesus.

            Maybe the problem is with our perception of Jesus.

            I often talk to sailors who say something like this: I have been good and yet God hates me.  He doesn’t take care of me! Whatever that might be…working too much or not getting the duty station they want or not getting promoted.  They get angry at God and they express their hurt and anger.  But if this is how we view God, you are more than likely to be disappointed.  Because these things will happen to us.  Bad things will inevitably happen to us and we will be looking for another God.

            So we can imagine John’s disappointment as he sends these messengers to Jesus.

            When the messengers get to Jesus, He responds simply, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up and the poor have good news preached to them” (Matthew 11:4b-5).  Jesus has this way of not answering the question that actually answers the question and here is no different.  His answer is an affirmation that the evidence speaks for itself.

            Jesus is looking back to the  prophesies of the Old Testament, specifically Isaiah 35.  Here we read,

Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then the lame man leap like a deer and the tongue of the mute sing for joy. (Isaiah 35:5).

            This was the time that was supposed to be inaugurated by the coming of the Messiah.  Isaiah had prophesied a time when the curse would be overturned and the kingdom of God would be established.  Jesus is saying that not only is he the one to bring this about, but that it is in fact happening as!   This is the significance of the coming of Jesus, and it is one that the Church needs to recapture.

            The third Sunday in Advent is known as ‘joy’ Sunday.  At about this time during the holiday season, most of us have probably lost our joy.  Stress has overtaken us as we have struggled with crowds to find Christmas presents.  We have endured office Christmas parties and we have watched enough holiday movies to drive us crazy.  Where is the joy? We may ask.

            And we are probably not alone in asking this.  Thousands of people around the world are asking along with us: where is the joy? Where is the joy that promised at Jesus’ coming? Where is the healing that was supposed to come along? Where is the blind that can see? Where is the deaf that can now hear? Where is the restoration of relationships, the politics that are not corrupt? Where is the answer to life’s problem?

            Let’s be honest, the world has expected more from the church and from the gospel.  The Church has often spoke about the greatness of Christ, but this has fallen on the deaf ears of the world. 

            I remember when I was younger…well in high school…and meeting a high school exchange student from Japan.  She was Buddhist and could not understand the Christian faith. She had a problem with the way we celebrated Christmas because we all talked about the ‘happiness’ and ‘joy’ of the season, but all she saw was sorrow and depression.  She could see nothing true about what we sung about or what we said was the holiday season. 

            And we have to say that this is true.  There are so many people stuck in the prison of their poverty, their depression, their addiction during this time of the year that they are truly asking, “are you the one we expected or should we look for someone else?”  Should we look for another answer, should we look for another Messiah?

            But the joyous message of the Church has always been: NO! Jesus is the Messiah! Jesus is the one who sets all things New! Jesus is the one who truly reveals God’s design for us!

            But what about the deaf? The Blind? The poor? What about those who are stuck in prison? What about those for whom the gospel was promised and yet there seems to be no delivery? Is there any true GOOD News for them?

            It may be hard for us, in our age of twenty four hour news cycles and addictions to anti-depressants, to believe that there is any good happening in the world.  But there is!

            It is found in the work of people like Shane Claiborne who has revitalized entire neighborhoods in Philadelphia by rehabbing old abandoned buildings and giving them to the poor. 

            It is found in the ministry of men like Oscar Romero who identified with the poor and oppressed in El Salvador to the point of giving his own life. 

            It is found in the work of institutions like the International Justice Mission that tries to liberate people trapped in the prison of slavery.  It is found in the work of local churches that work for reconciliation, salvation and peace.  Martin Luther King, Jr called this work the creation of the Beloved Community.

            There is good…GREAT news for them! God is at work in the world, utilizing the church to shed his glory and his kingdom! We are there to offer life to those who are outcast, good news to the poor and hope to the infirm. 

            Advent invites us to wait for God, but it also invites us to see God at work and to delight in the work of the Lord.  We are not to expect anybody else, because the one who has come is the one whom we have waited for and Christ is the one to establish this kingdom.  In this, we hope, in him, we rejoice. 

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[1] Letters and Papers from Prison

When Jerusalem Burns

Lamentations 3:1-23

It was a bright beautiful end of summer afternoon…the kind that makes you want stay out forever and run and play in the grass and just enjoy life.  You can imagine the kind of anticipation that we had while we waited painfully for that school bell to ring and we could escape the shackles of an societal prison, the school.  When it finally rang, we bolted out of the school faster than a streak of lightening, each to their individual homes to frolick the last vestiges of summer.

The school bus never saw Kevin…and Kevin never saw the school bus.

In the blink of a moment, a young boy’s life was ended and a family’s world was destroyed.  I remember sitting in our classroom, trying to absorb the news that our friend and our classmate was gone, never to see him again.  His desk sat as an empty reminder of this lost life and as an awareness that life was so much more fragile than it had appeared to be.  We all understood the rules of the game: old people die, not young ones.  10 year old boys are not supposed to die…EVER.  And if they did, there was always some miracle, some new drug or some new medical power that could bring him back to life and everything was going to be alright, all the time.

I remember going to the viewing and seeing Kevin’s family.  What do you say to a family that is mourning the loss not only of their loved one, but of their future, of the world they once knew, and their entrance into a new world where things no longer make sense, where ‘God’ no longer operates in the rules they are accustomed to.  Somehow the words, ‘sorry for your loss’ when I finally managed to utter them out of my lips didn’t seem to help or even begin to address the issues that were going on.

What do you think when death and destruction haunt our doors? What do you do when your world crumbles around you and becomes a devastating mockery of the life you once knew? Where do you go when Jerusalem burns to the ground, never to be restored again?

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This is much more than an academic question, and the answer has life and death consequences to it.

We live in the midst of suffering, sometimes more and sometimes less,  but the reality of suffering surrounds us and at times threatens to overwhelm us.  We see it in the death of children, the destruction of families, the scars of warfare, and the struggles of the sick.  We always don’t know what to do with it, and so at times in the Church we pretend that it doesn’t exist.  We put our church faces with our big smiles and we enter the door of the church and we pretend for a couple of hours that our suffering doesn’t exist, that we are happiest people on earth.  We are afraid, sometimes that the Church…or God…might see us in our weakness or in our struggles and we may be laid bare before it all.  We sing praise songs we don’t mean to ensure that nobody will discover the pain and the anger that all too close to the surface. 

Where do you go….when Jerusalem burns?

This is the reality that Jeremiah faced when his world ended.

Jeremiah is one the most fascinating people in Scripture, for me anyway.  He is the longest of the writing prophets and he is the prophet that we know the most about, emotionally.  He is not ashamed, as here in this passage to express the full rains of emotions.  It is interesting that when Jesus asked who the people said that he was, “Jeremiah” was one of the answers (Matthew 16:14), and that says a great deal about how people viewed Jeremiah…or Jesus for that matter.

But Jeremiah lived in a time of great suffering.  He lived at the end of the Southern Kingdom.  Jeremiah prophesies for over 40 years.  At the end of his ministry, Jeremiah suffered the most devastating loss one could imagine.  The Babylonian army came in and crushed Jerusalem.  They put Israel’s leaders to death, they exported the brightest, the best and the beautiful to Babylon, and they burned Jerusalem to the ground.  At first Jeremiah was put on the Exile train out to Babylon, but then he was given a choice and he chose to return to the ruins of Jerusalem, and to live minister among the people.  It is in this situation that Jeremiah writes the Lamentations.

We can begin to understand the devastation that Jeremiah must have felt as he looked at the ashes of his city and took in the horrific sights around him.  And as we look at this text, we can’t simply read it and explain it.  We must experience it.

‘I am the man who has seen affliction under the rod of his wrath.” (3:1) This dark and ominous beginning should haunt us.  As we read on, he has driven me and brought me into darkness without any light; surely against me he turns his hand again and again the whole day long.” (3:2) There is a reason why Lamentations doesn’t make it into too many devotional books and this is it!

His entire world has turned to darkness.  Surely we know people for whom this is true…surely this has been true even for us at times. Later on he will say, “my soul is bereft of peace, I have forgotten what happiness is”(3:17)

Why? How could Jeremiah….I mean Jeremiah is a prophet, a righteous man…how could he say these things?

It goes back to the destruction of Jerusalem.  For us, Jerusalem may be just a city on a map, far away not only geographically but culturally.  We don’t think much about Jerusalem and we sure don’t think about the temple in any significant way (for right reasons). But for Jeremiah, Jerusalem was the very heart of the kingdom of God.  The death and suffering of people was horrible enough, but the destruction of Jerusalem was something else entirely!

Jerusalem was the place where God lived. It was his physical location among the people and it was the proof that God had indeed blessed His people with His presence.  Great things had happened there and greater things were yet to come.  Micah and Isaiah prophesied about a time when Mt. Zion will be exalted above all other mountains and the nations would swarm to the Temple and learn about God and the Word of God would go forth into all the world.  The people of Israel, it was claimed, would rule the nations of the world, from Jerusalem, which would be the center of the world.  Jerusalem would be the place where the divine and the human intersected and now it is burning to the ground, reduced to rubble and ashes.  How can that be? How could God do this?

God had crossed a boundary for Jeremiah…a self-established rule that God must not break.

We all have them, if we are honest with ourselves.   We impose rules on God and we expect them to be followed.  Rules such as, I will worship God as long as children do not die.  It’s perfectly fine for adults and old people to die, because after all, that’s how things work.  But not children! I will worship God as long as my marriage remains intact and everything is financially good.  I will worship God  as long as I don’t lose my job.

But the moment any of these things happened, God has crossed a line that we cannot bear and we will not tolerate and we will run away from him and take refuge in our despair.

Look at the source of Jeremiah’s despair:

            He has driven men and brought me into darkness

            HE has made my flesh and my skin waste away

            He has made me dwell in darkness like the dead of long ago

            He has walled me about so that I cannot escape

            He is a bear lying in wait for me

            He turned aside my steps and tore me to pieces

            He has made me desolate

Translate this: God has taken away my life and left me empty and bereft of happiness. “My endurance has perished; so has my hope from the Lord.”

Ever meet anybody like this? I know I have.

I remember going to visit a lady at one of the churches I’ve served who was stuck in the past.  Her husband and her daughter had died, only a few months apart from each other.  Her world was completely devastated and she could not recover.  Her heart broke every moment of every day and no matter how much she cried it was never enough.  There was no light, only darkness.

I’ve talked with fathers who have lost their children whose only words that I could distinguish between sobs were “my baby boy….” No light, only darkness.

I’ve seen marriages shattered on the altar of reality where a husband or a wife realizes the type of person they married and life will never be the same again.  No light, only darkness.

And sadly this is where so many people stay.  They can’t get out of these thoughts and they can’t go anywhere with them. 

I remember watching my mother die of Parkinson’s disease.  Parkinson’s is a cruel type of disease because it not only robs you of life, it takes away every ounce of dignity you possess as a person.  I was a relatively new Christian as my mom got sick.  I used to pray every day that God would ‘fix’ her.  That God would perform a miracle, that God would come down from heaven and cure her.  I used to make ‘deals’ with God, that if He would fix her, then I would be a missionary and go the ends of the earth, or that I would make sure that everybody would have a copy of the Bible and I would do my best  to make sure that everybody believed in God.

It didn’t work. 

Mom died, and I remember being broken.  God had broken the rules.  And I began to think, maybe if I had prayed harder or maybe if I had done more or maybe if I wasn’t just a screw up that maybe God would have healed her.  I remember the darkness creeping in, threatening to overtake my soul. I remember feeling like Jeremiah.  “My soul is bereft of peace.  I have forgotten what happiness is.”

Where do you go, when Jerusalem burns?

Jeremiah gives us an answer. “But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope.  The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning.”

Now if he had said this to me, I would have responded with “ARE YOU KIDDING ME? GOD DOESN’T LOVE ME, GOD HATES ME! HOW COULD YOU EVEN THINK THIS?”

But the amazing thing is that Jeremiah doesn’t respond like this.  He has a very different reaction.  He is able to go through the pain of the first nineteen verses of the chapter and end with this absolute and wonderful declaration.

Notice that there is no theological discourse here.  There is no prolonged discussion of the nature of evil or any answers to the question of “If there is a good God, why do bad things happen?” This is because Jeremiah’s purpose is very different.  He is showing us two things: (1) when bad things happen, we need to be honest to God with all of our emotions and (2) we need to root our hope in God and His love.  The only thing that keeps us out of the darkness is knowing the reality that no matter what happens, God’s love is constant.

Jeremiah says, “But this I call to mind and therefore I have hope”(3:21).  “Hope” in Scripture is not an abstract term.  We often use the word “hope” as a “wish” or a “longing”.  If I say when I’m at work, that “I hope that Marilee will bake a pie today,” I am expressing a wish that there will be pie when I get home.  I have no basis on which to base this hope, unless Marilee said “I am making a pie” before I left for work. 

But in Scripture, the word ‘hope’ has a different connotation.  “Hope” refers to a definite knowledge that you have within you.   The Hebrew literally means ‘to wait’ because ‘hope’ is about seeing beyond our current circumstance and seeing beyond the present reality.  It looks to what we know God will do in the future.  It is this that shapes and frames the present, because we know that no matter how bad things are now, no matter how terrible or even how horrific, God wild deliver us from it.

            “But I will hope continually and will praise you more and more”-Psalm 71:4

 “But as for me, I will look to the LORD; I will wait for the God of my salvation; my God will hear me.” Micah 7:7

Even the New Testament understand this:

“According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead..” 1 Peter 1:3

And so Jeremiah reminds us that in the midst of all this terror, in the midst of this darkness, there is hope, because of who God is and what he has done.  We may be so captured by our reality that we don’t think there is any possibility that things could change.  But the gospel calls us to hope in God, to know, beyond the shadow of any doubt that things will get better.

But how do we know?  When we are faced  with suffering, with pain, with death, how can be sure that things will change?

Jeremiah again gives us the answer.

“The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases.” (3:23)

There is no greater statement in the entire First Testament than this verse! And we are usually in such a rush to get to this verse when we get to this chapter that we ignore the preceding twenty verses.  Devotional books cutout the surrounding material in order to highlight this verse.  But if we do that, we actually miss the point of how great this verse truly is.  In light of great suffering, the ‘steadfast love’ of the Lord never ever ceases. 

The Hebrew word dsx is our anchor in this passage.  There is no one word in English that captures the meaning.  What it refers to is that deep, covenantal love of God that will never be shaken.

            “…His steadfast love endures forever.”-1 Chronicles 16:41

“O Lord, God of heaven, the great and awesome God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keeps his commandment.” Nehemiah 1:5

“Your steadfast love, O Lord, extends to the heavens; your faithfulness to the clouds.” Psalm 36:5

The way that the Apostle John puts this statement is, “God is love” (1 John 4:8).  The idea is that God’s love is so closely attached to his character that there is no distinction between the two.

But how do we know this?

Because God proves this over and over again to us.  Scripture is one big story about how God’s constant love prevails.  God loves the people of Israel and proves himself again and again. Jesus reminds us of this love at the end of the gospel of Matthew by declaring that “I will never leave you nor forsake you..”

But most of all, we know God’s steadfast love never fails because of the crucifixion and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.

In fact, we could re-read this chapter in light of, and from the perspective of Jesus and God the Father.  We can hear the anguish of Jesus as he approaches the cross.  We can picture the anguish of God as he looks at His Son on the cross and looks at the true Jerusalem and the true Temple lying in ruins, shattered on the cross.

God is not far away, a dispassionate deity who is unconcerned with our suffering.  He is a God that knows what suffering is like, who understands our pain and who understands what is to see dreams shattered.  He is not a cruel God who throws us into a world of pain  haphazardly or with no concern.  He is a God who stands right with us in the midst of shattered dreams and broken worlds.  He is a God who hears our grief, and grieves with us.  

But he is also a God who pushes us beyond our grief and our current situation.  That is what is amazing about the Resurrection.   It is not just proof that there is life after death (there is that), it is that God’s faithfulness, God’s steadfast love, God’s hesed is faithful to us beyond all the darkest moments of our lives.  He proves that for every world that is broken and every dream  that is shattered, there is a hope to be had by all people.

So…where do you go when Jerusalem burns, when your hopes and dreams are shattered and the darkness threatens to overtake you? You run into the arms of the Savior, whose steadfast love never ceases and whose mercies are new every morning.  

God's Disappointment

I remember when I was a kid experiencing disappointment for one of the very first times in my life.  It was nothing earth shattering, but it had a profound impact on me.  I was in the Magic Kingdom in Disney World (any child’s dream come true!), waiting to see Mickey Mouse.  Mickey of course is the king of Disney World and no visit is a complete success without a hug from Mickey.  Well, Mickey was out there and all the kids were flocking to him, and I realized that I was going to have to wait to see him.  But before I could get through the throngs of kids with their brightly colored shorts and Mickey Mouse hats on, Mickey was gone! I had missed my opportunity to hug Mickey. 

A few years ago, Philip Yancey wrote a book that every Christian should read entitled, Disappointment with God.  In it, he deals with our soul’s struggle with God.  I’ve often wondered if maybe at times we should reflect on the opposite side of the equation, on God’s disappointment with us…or just me in particular.

I have often wondered if it were to be possible to count the number of people I have disappointed in life.  I think it is inevitable that we are going to disappoint.  We can never quite live up to the hype of ourselves, the pure potential we have inside of us, or the image we harbor inside of ourselves.  Most of us so desperately want to satisfy people’s expectations of us that we often live in denial when we fail to meet those expectations.  There is a soul shattering thud in our hearts when the truth of our failure comes to light and there is no denying that we are not the people we imagine ourselves to be.

Perhaps you could say that I was destined to be a disappointment.  Or perhaps I became a disappointment through my life choices and the decisions I have made.  Maybe there was some inherent flaw within me, or that I created a flaw and have acted accordingly.

When I was younger, people would look at me and say that I had great potential.  “You have so much to offer the world,” one counselor said.  “You are going to be great,” my parents would say. “You will impact the kingdom of God,” my churches said.  Only as time has raced on, the potential I had has gone unused or it has atrophied or it has been wasted. 

I disappointed my parents because I could not live up to their dreams for me.  I still at this date do not know or understand what those dreams were, other than I would be great.  Perhaps I was supposed to be a lawyer or a politician to help right the wrongs in the world.  Or perhaps I could have been a medical doctor and helped sick people.  But whatever those dreams were, they certainly don’t match my reality and I am cut off from the world of my past.

My high school labeled me ‘the most likely to succeed,’ but they again never defined what success was.  Was it money, power, or a combination of the two of them? Was it to go on to be a statesman and to come back to my hometown in order to lead future generations in the paths they should go? Regardless of that, I have been the most successful person with the fancy job and the big house.  I have not returned, unlike Hardy’s prodigal Native, to illuminate any path towards success.  I have let them down.

Have I been the best husband? Lord knows that is not the case and how many times have I let my wife down?  How many times have I not been the strong provider and supporter that she was expecting and needing?  How many times…?

I could go on to explain the churches and the parishioner’s I have disappointed?  How many times did I not have the piece of advice they needed or the patience and love they desired?  How many times did I walk into the office, feeling as if I could accomplish everything like Hercules…only when the end of the day came, Ichabod Crane emerged from office door, defeated and scared at every shadow?  How many committees who interviewed me and hired me did I let down when they began to realize my weaknesses and problems?   How many do I currently disappoint who come to my office seeking for answers only to emerge more confused than ever?

And now, sitting on the precipice of life, what do I look forward to?  With a sense of dread, I know the day is coming when I will disappoint my children and they will no longer look at me as that silly man who makes them smile, but will know the reality that I am a fragile, broken and vain little man? 

And with that in mind it is with trepidation that perhaps we should ask the question: is God disappointed with me?

My gut answer would be: OF COURSE HE IS!  How, in fact, could He not be?  What, with my silly prayers and fleeting conviction and lackluster devotion to discipleship and mission?  I can imagine being dragged before the court of heaven, having God Almighty standing there, showing me the wonder of His creation and saying with a disgusted sigh, “I made this for the likes of you?”

Is there any hope for a disappointment like me?

Out of the corner of the Old Testament, there does seem to be a glimmer…and maybe just more than a glimmer.  In the prophet Zephaniah we read this:

                        On that day you shall not be put to

                                    Shame

                        Because of deeds by which you have rebelled against me;

                        For then I will remove you from your midst

                                    Your proudly exultant ones

                        And you shall no longer be haughty in my holy mountain

                                    But I will leave in your midst

                                    A people humble and lowly

                        They shall seek refuge in the name of

                                    The Lord

                        They shall do no injustice

                                    And speak no lies

                        Nor shall there be found in their mouth

                                    A deceitful tongue

                        For they shall gaze and lie down

                                    And none shall make them afraid

                        Sing aloud, o Daughter of Zion

                                    Shout, O Israel

                        Rejoice and exult with all your heart

                                    O Daughter of Jerusalem!

                        The Lord has taken away the judgments

                                    Against you

                                    He has cleared away your enemies

                        The King of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst

                                    You shall never again fear evil

                        On that day be it said to Jerusalem

                                    Fear not, O Zion

                                    Let not your hands grow weak

                        The Lord your God is in your midst

                                     A mighty one who will save

                                    He will rejoice over you with gladness

                                    He will quiet you by his love

                                    He will exult over you with loud singing

“He will quiet you by his love”

This is said to a group of people who have disappointed God, their families, their ancestors and their neighbors.  This is said to people who have failed to live up to their potential and their expectations.  And yet, God, does not say, “I am thoroughly disappointed in you…” nor does he say, “You have let me down…”  Rather, just the opposite, he will remove these judgments against them and he will rejoice over them with great singing.  Imagine for a second the image of Almighty God, king of the Universe, singing over these rag tag group of people…who have done nothing but disappoint…and you begin to see the amazing truth in the gospel. 

We have to remember that the Kingdom of God is made up of nothing but disappointments.  Which one of us has ever lived up to our potential, who has ever met the expectations of everyone we have met or has lived his life with God to the fullest?

I have days when I remember this truth, but then I have days where the burden of disappointment seems to dominate me and threatens to overwhelm me.  I have days when I can rejoice that God loves me despite my failures and days when the deep threatens to swallow me up. 

The hope is that even though we continue to disappoint, that God will one day overcome all the disappointment in the world and restore His kingdom.