See Your Deliverance Anew
Blessings on this Holy Tuesday of Passion Week. As I read further in Isaiah 52, I find verses 9-12 to be reminiscent of an earlier moment of significance in Israel’s history. It was the time when God called Moses to liberate Israel from Egypt… to lead God’s people out of bondage. At that time, they were a loose collection of twelve tribes united by their plight of imprisonment, a fractured existence, and a fractured sense of self all from which they prayed to God to come swiftly and deliver them. At that time, the Lord sent Moses as Israel’s answer. When the window of opportunity was opened following the 10th plague that fell on Egypt, Moses swiftly led the people out of bondage.
In today’s text, God’s people are called to move out, to move forward in a decisive and deliberate way. This time there is no need to move in haste, for the Lord himself is present with them. The Lord is active as both their human and divine agent leading his people from the front and protecting them in the rear. The people of which Isaiah speaks are united. They have already been established as a community having their own laws, leaders, and system of governance, these people have formed a nation whose sovereign king is God. They do not walk in fear and in haste, but as leaders within the human community, for they do not represent the Israel of old, but Zion. They represent the nation of God which is to come.
Let Us Pray
Lord God, we thank you for your grace. We thank you for the people that you are calling us out… drawing us out to be. We pray that we represent you right in the world. That we would be a light to the masses, an example of what it is to live life in the fullness of who we are created to be in you.
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