by Amanda Martin
Isaiah 42:24-43:7 (an incredibly reduced synopsis from The Message:
But now, Gods Message, The God who made you in the first place.. The One who got you started, Israel:
“Don’t be afraid, I’ve redeemed you. I’ve called your name. You’re mine.
When you’re in over your head, I’ll be there with you, When you’re in rough waters, you will not go down.
When you’re between a rock and a hard place,
It won’t be a dead end
Because I am God, your personal God I WILL change the world for you, I’d sell the world to get you back.
You mean SO much More than you know
So, don’t be afraid. I’ll take care of your offspring, pull them in to me from every place and in each situation. I’ll send them home from far away places, everyone, man woman child, who is created in my image and made to look like me, each one.
Get the blind and deaf out here and ready —
The blind (though there’s not a thing wrong with their eyes)
The deaf (though there’s not a thing wrong with their ears)
Then get all diverse nations out here and ready, what do they have to say, present their testimony
But You are my witnesses … my handpicked servant … so that you’ll come to know and trust me understand that I am and who I am, I spoke, I saved. I told you what existed long before these upstart Gods. Yes, I am God, I’ve always been God and I always will No one can take anything from me. I make; who can unmake it?”
Our personal God speaks. We have all been designed to listen and echo the sound.
The aural sense is the first to develop in utero, it is the last sense to degenerate before death. Hearing its mother’s voice, the new born baby will turn its head in preference to any other sound stimulus. Those who experience profound hearing loss process sense waves of sound vibration and energy distributed from an external source. Your ear is a complex sound chamber designed to receive signal, discriminate sound waves and echo them back to the brain to process meaning, deduce understanding, and formulate a response both emotional and many times physical. In short, your body and mind are created to receive, poised to respond, and reverberate an external signal. Surely you’re prepared to hear God, and EVERY OTHER cacophony of inner and worldy voices.
Isaiah reminds that God has spoken into the world (WHERE?), your name, and calls you, personally YOU to not be afraid (WHAT?) for she picks you for the team! God is willing to go to great ends to talk to you and be close to you, you look a lot alike.
Isaiah urges in this sermon, God is speaking when there are choices that effect the FUTURE (WHEN), when your kids are sick, when far from family and friends and HOME. God urges all nations (WHO?) can be heard without defensiveness and feel safe that we are to understand God, our creator, whom has showed us the language of love in the life of Jesus. God is speaking, the one who knows us and loves us as we are made, who calls us to the existence that is her will. Thanks be to God.
Prayer: Loving and nurturing creator, Thank you for this design that prepares us to sense you, help us to know we are understood by you, and can deep within understand your ways, then in turn to respond with caring your grand purpose. Amen