December 2024
‘My word ... shall accomplish that which I purpose’.
Isaiah 55:11 (ESV)
Isaiah 55 from which December’s Saying comes, offers us a beautiful expression
of God’s otherness, his all-powerful majesty, of God’s overwhelming
God-ish-ness. Advent teaches us to connect with the miracle of the humanity of
God as a tiny child. Other teachers, including St. Augustine, show us God within
us; the divine indwelling. The Eucharist offers us the ultimate literal and
metaphorical possibility of consuming God. Yet in the midst of this forging of
relationship, connection and similarity between God and us, Isaiah gives us the
chance to grasp God’s ‘Godlikeness’ anew.
Father Ben O’Rourke in his book about prayer Finding Your Hidden Treasure, reminds us that ‘Francis of
Assisi … would repeat over and over the questions “Lord, who am I? Lord, who
are you?” ’. Isaiah answers them, but not with an easy reply. Isaiah’s God
declares himself to be fundamentally beyond us:
For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
Neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth
So are my ways higher than your ways
And my thoughts than your thoughts.
These words (at 55.8-10) are deeply useful, whether we struggle to bear
personal burdens or to understand how acts of global outrage can happen.
Such things do not come from God, but their permitted existence simply must
‘be’ if God allows us free will. The basis upon which God allows us this is not
ours to understand. It is God who is God, we are not required to be. May the
realisation of this offer itself to us as the gift that it is and as a profound relief.
The ultimate jewel that Isaiah offers us however comes earlier still, at 55.6: ‘Seek
the LORD while he may be found’. We do not need to be God, but we do need
to be near him. Silent prayer offers us one simple, blessed, healing route to him.
May we find ourselves near to God, seeking and finding him in stillness, this
Christmas and always.