This post is more for me to store two short sections from an amazing book about the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, Blood Brothers, which I just finished, than it is for anyone else.
(p. 137)
It was during our final spring days at St. Sulpice, that my kindly mentor, Father ongere, touched a deeply resonant note, like a voice out of eternity. I had come to value his widom, his remarkable way of challenging us, spurring us to deeper though on any subject in which we were certain of our opinion. During one his final lectures, I found myself riveted to his words.
"If there is a problem somwhere," he said with his dry chuckle, "this is what happens. Three people will try to do something concrete to settle the issue. Ten people will give a lecture analyzing what the three are doing. One hundred people will commend or condemn the ten for their lecture. One thousand people will argue about the problem. And one person--only one--will involve himself so deeply in the true solution that he is too busy to listen to any of it."
"Now," he asked gentrly, his penetrating eyes meeting each of ours in turn, "which person are you?"
(p.153)
Isaiah had bound justice and righteousness together. And Jesus, who often quoted Isaiah, surely knew that. In fact, it was for justice and righteousness that He had come. Over and over He demonstrated that the stiff laws of the Old Testament were only a shadow of the higher law of God's love that He had come to fulfill. The woman taken in adultery, when repentant, was not stoned, but forgiven for her weakness. The blind and the crippled were helaed on the Sabbath, "for the sabbath was made for man." The Samaritan outcast became a person worthy of honor and concern. For one of the first things Jesus did when He reconciled man to God was to restore human dignity.
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2 comments:
Colby, I found you blog through Dani's. We'll have to go out again sometime soon.
Blood Brothers is great! You should check out some Arundhati Roy, and Trita Parsi. Here is a clip from some of Arundhati Roys speeches:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vnaf8R_SJo
On a side note I noticed you read All The Shah's Men. I'm reading Stephen Kinzers other book "Blood of Brothers: Life and War in Nicaragua" you should check it out, its really good.
Isaiah was once a ‘stone wall’ to me, a hard thing to understand. But I’ve studied it considerably since those days and I now find it to be poetry of extreme beauty and complexity. Most of Isaiah is dualistic, and even triplistic, in that it contains overlapping layers of prophesy for Isaiah’s day, the time of the Savior, and modern times. Many of the verses in the latter half of Isaiah (40 - 66) contain prophesy of the gathering of Israel and subsequent events.
Through Isaiah, The Lord gave many prophesies of the then future Savior, which the Savior then quoted to remind the Jews that he was The Promised One. Isaiah 53 is, of course, the penultimate chapter on the Savior
KBYU has an excellent, excellent series on Isaiah at: http://www.byub.org/isaiah/
Chills run down my spine when I hear Lincoln Brewster’s ‘Everlasting God’, at the end, as the music fades away, and his small son quotes Isaiah 40: 28- 31 --
“. . .the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? there is no searching of his understanding.
29 He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength.
30 Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall:
31 But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.”
Yep, Mystic, I’m a poor, but genuine, Isaiah scholar. :-)
Thanks for the tip . . . I will read ‘Blood Brothers’ as soon as I can.
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