RBWords

     Is Isaiah showing faith in the resurrection as we Christians would come to believe in it after Jesus' rose from the dead?  Most of the commentaries I consult say "no."  However, Isaiah may very well be praying for a restoration of the kingdom(s) lost to Assyrian and Babylonian conquests with all their slaughter and deportations.  He is not the only prophet to pray for a "national restoration."  Ezekiel and Hosea also chime in, trying to give hope to those who lived in exile.  The Holy Land seems to have ever been an anvil on which many lives have been destroyed after hopes have risen.

 

     In recent days, the conflict between Israel and Palestinians has once more begun to escalate and the sparks fly from the anvil.  In fact, the whole Middle East seems to have become the anvil!  Political lines drawn in the desert by the Sykes-Pinchot Treaty after World War I reflected the colonial and political interests of Western powers and not the concerns of those who lived in the area.  Caught in the middle of this is the Christian church which is gradually losing population because the conflict between Israel and Palestine and between Sunni and Shi'ite Moslems is driving them to migrate to less violent environments in the West. 

 

     With Isaiah we can pray for peace, restoration and an end to slaughter and that both Christian, Jew and Moslem can live together and worship without bullets and bombs flying in all directions.  The fact that we are praying with Isaiah [long before Christians or Moslems existed] means that it is a very old sorrow, indeed!  AMEN