For as the rain comes down, and the snow from heaven, and do not return there, but water the earth, and make it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall My Word be that goes forth from My mouth; It shall not return to Me void, but It shall accomplish what I please, and It shall prosper in the thing for which I sent It. Isaiah 55:10-11
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” [Genesis 1:1]. Thus began Creation, having an extent and complexity which even today intrigues and puzzles the greatest of minds. God then spoke simply and directly, “Let there be light!” Light is a most peculiar – for want of a better word – substance. Its speed has been used as a constant for many decades, because if the light source comes toward or away from you, the light itself doesn’t appear to go faster or slower, yet the colors within it are compressed or expanded according to how the source is moved.
The speed of light is the pivot for the conversion between energy and matter – light therefore has been given a major role in regard to all the other building blocks of the universe. Atoms with all their subatomic particles, stars, and galaxies, planets and moons, and everything on them can now be described by and seen through this critical “substance.” Some experiments say that light is a stream of energy packets, others indicate waves of energy within a some sort of transmitting medium – ultimately, light defies simple explanation.
“Let there be light,” and all this, in all its intricacy, simply happened. God had no need to pull out slide rule or computer and do a long process of design and then go through an extended trial and error to find what might work. He just simply commanded it, and thousands of years later, with all the resources of scientists, they are still only gradually discovering what those four words contained.
This is the background for the Isaiah’s message. This Old Testament lesson also starts with nature, reminding the listener to look around at how everything was set up in order to provide the necessities for life. I often think about how clouds are the marvelous solution for moving great quantities of water from where there is lots of water to where the only source of moisture is from the sky. Imagine the pipelines or tanker cars which would be required if the clouds didn’t so easily sweep across the sky with their loads of water.
The rain comes down and doesn’t merely evaporate back up, but now the water wends its way through the land, bringing water to even more areas. The snow actually is a fertilizer in that it brings nitrogen down to the earth, something which is important for plant growth. The subsequent rivers bring down rich soil, which makes plants thrive. Now comes the seed, grown through its own wondrous miracle, which is harvested, processed and eaten.
It is an elaborate total system which is ingenious in each step’s simplicity. Then we step back again and look at the One Who by directly speaking His Word called all this into being. We look at His mind, His wisdom, His imagination, His power and all the rest which are displayed in these things, as St Paul said, “what may be known of God is manifest …, for God has shown it … For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead…” [Romans 1:19-20]
Another thing in the lesson is how the ancients viewed the spoken word. There was no such thing where one could “take back” anything that was said. Once spoken, it had a life of its own, to bring comfort or to wreak judgment according to what that word contained. How we must stand in awe, for when the Lord speaks, He does not have second thoughts, He does not form His statement poorly, it does not have to be corrected – it is right, proper, necessary, and exact just as spoken, and it will not even be tailored as to whether it hurts our feelings or not.
That could be a great comfort, since now you know that you deal with Someone Who means exactly what He says – He is entirely open-face as He speaks to us. You know exactly where He stands, where He coming from and where He is going. You can trust that He gives you straight-off-the-shoulder, reliable descriptions and promises. He won’t waffle about by merely being nice or saying “feel good” things with what is partial, false, or irresponsible.
And yet that is precisely the issue we have with Him. It is like a favorite saying of mine, that when it comes to politics we want the candidates to lie to us, but then when they are elected we complain because they lie to us. So also with the Lord – we wish He would lie to us, tell us all sorts of nice things, pat us on the head and then tell us to go and have fun. But that is not in His nature.
How offensive that He should identify problems and warn us of consequences! How dare He be such a downer to tell of how we have destroyed our relationships with Him, with others, with Creation, and even with ourselves! How dare He describe how we destroy the humanness at the core of our being, which we relentlessly dissect and flush down the toilet! How dare He demand that we discipline ourselves and conform to His design for who and what we are to be in His universe!
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Underneath the surface, we do have our suspicions concerning the mess the world is in and our participation in the increasing chaos, however our pride makes us reluctant to hear about it. Every even little bit of lawlessness, like not paying attention to the traffic laws, on to things like a morality which thumbs its nose at God, to resentments and jealousies, to disrespecting the property of other people, to seeking out ways to shame and belittle each other, broken promises, anger, hatreds, arrogance, conflicts, and so on up the scale of rebellion demonstrates the brokenness we have between us and God, us and our fellow humans, and us and Creation.
The hardest for us to hear is about the necessity to submit to God’s will. Sure, God may have a good idea or two, but where He calls upon us to make ourselves vulnerable – to “deny ourselves,” “to take up our cross” – to be downright foolhardy with things like “turn the other cheek,” “forgive seventy times seven” – to be generous to one who wants to humiliate you, to rob you – well, we’ll stick to our suspicions of His reliability and question His good will and compassion. What God wants is judged and found wanting in regard to reasonableness and practicality.
When He insists that He will always walk our path with us, that He will bring comfort and strength in hard times, that He makes all things work together for good, that He has blessings and joy in store for us despite the harshness of the rebellious and broken world around us, the red flags rise in our minds. Really what can He do about the conditions we can find ourselves in, especially when He doesn’t magically take us out of them? And besides, does He really even want to give us hope and help? Does He really care?
This is why it is necessary for Him to speak frankly and honestly about our situation. Whether our feelings are bruised or not won’t do anything to really help us. He must be realistic about what He must provide to answer the turmoil which influences our life, as well as to give clear answers when our eternal destiny is at stake.
That’s why the Lord started the text by directing our attention to Creation, the hard concrete reality of what He can do, what He did do, and what He does do constantly. He does know how things work, even when His plan was so thoroughly spoiled and degraded by human rebellion. Look at nature, which has been so devastated when humanity caused it to be placed under a curse – look at how it struggles to still complete the role it was created to have! This is from the hand of a Creator with extraordinary wisdom and foresight to anticipate our needs even after human will has corrupted everything.
If they could, how much of nature – especially light, rain, snow, and seeds – would laugh at our feeble, painfully short-term solutions for our problems, especially when dealing with the critical emptiness which lies within our hearts! We have done a very poor job at remedying the dilemma humanity is in, and we are aware of how things deteriorate rather than improve. Oh, we have wild fantasies, of course, but the Lord has to set before us the unvarnished truth of the need for a superior answer to our sin-mutilated spirits.
The wonderful news is that all along He was ready with that superior Answer, and one day, as St John put it succinctly, “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His Glory, the Glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth” [John 1:14]. Standing before us in human form is “The Word” – and He is the unvarnished “truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.” The Truth: the price which must be paid for our own rebellion and self-centered way of life. The Truth: the only One capable to pay the price in full is the Creator Himself. The Truth: He would experience the rejection not only of humanity, but also of the law of God against sin, because He made Himself become the rebellion of the people He wanted to save.
But then in His resurrection, this Word-made-flesh beckons to us, to come follow Him, learning to submit to His will, the will which created light, the will which brings water from afar to water the earth, the will which is not satisfied that we should live in the emptiness and failures of our rebellion but to rather discover how the One Who so minutely detailed each part of Creation can also do wonders in every part of our lives.
Come now and enter into the blessings of His Creation here and also of the one forever, as He comes now to enter into our world, revealing His willingness to actually with us, walk with us, and enter into our hearts. Come and meet Jesus in His Body and Blood to give you the confidence that God plays straight with you, and although He does say things you don’t like to hear, also declares with the same voice as “Let there be Light” the wonderful news of rescue with life forever, and Who pronounces that He will never turn away from anyone who comes to Him.
Look around you: the faithfulness and attributes of God as displayed in Creation declare how much more will this same Creator be to us who now walk along His paths, enjoying His wisdom, power, and especially His love.