God compares the impact of his word to that of rain and snow on dry ground. Let’s explore that image for a bit. We forget how vital water that comes from the rain is for our well-being. Most of us changed our water use habits during the big drought some years ago, and those habits have stuck. We currently average 177 l per person per day in SE Qld. The bits of rain that have come meant we don’t have to water our lawns. Angela and I watched ‘The boy who harnessed the wind’. In Malawi, there was serious drought, dangerous social turmoil, and a young teenager with no money to send him to school, manages to power up a water pump, using a handmade windmill and a little bike dynamo and bits from the dump. Suddenly that village can supply their own food in the dry season and their community was able to continue. The film portrayed the massive social impact of drought on subsistence farmers and their families. Why is it that parts of the world are still utterly dependent on good rains and good growing seasons? We are immensely blessed that we share and it generally works well. There can be drought in SE Qld, and we still get our food. Water supply is vital.
In our Old Testament reading, God compares his word to the snow and rain that bring needed water to dry land and transform it. God’s word does what is says. The Hebrew for word doesn’t mean something just spoken, it also includes action. It does what it says, particularly when God speaks. In Genesis 1 God says, ‘Let there be’… and there was, and God saw that it was good.
Her is this reading, God’s Old Testament people have lost everything. They have been taken from their homeland to Babylon. The city walls for Jerusalem have been broken down, and their beloved temple destroyed. Everything that gave them security and a sense of belonging had been destroyed. But now the prophet Isaiah is announcing that they will soon return, and that everything will be changed, transformed. The mountains and the hills will burst into song, and the trees of the field will clap their hands. That’s a beautiful, powerful image and maybe there have been times when you’ve experienced that – a micro-second burst of awareness: that the world around you is so wonderful, that you are loved, that life is good. I believe those micro-second bursts point us to something that is deeply true and deeply real, in Christ.
Those exiles returning to Jerusalem didn’t walk into a new garden of Eden. It was wonderful to be back, but….the people who had moved in after they’d left didn’t want them back. The temple was still a ruin, and way too hard to rebuild. It was hard to make a living.
Did God cheat them, by raising their expectations, and then not delivering? That prophecy does come true, but like most prophecies, it is fulfilled in Christ. But it’s only by looking back, looking in the light of the cross and Easter, that we see how it works out.
God’s word comes, and transforms the weed ruined places, ‘instead of briers, the myrtle will grow.’
Jesus is God’s word for us, the word who became flesh, as John tells us. We are caught up in sin, whatever shape that takes: massive ego trips, fantasies that stop us seeing and honouring what is real, fears and anxieties that rule our life, rigid thinking that stops our compassion and kindness to others, bitterness and hurts that get incubated and used to justify all sorts of unhelpful behaviours and attitudes. Lots and lots of things take the place of God in our hearts, but fail to deliver peace and joy that lasts. God’s Word, in all sorts of ways, gets announced to us: our sins are forgiven. We are at peace with God the Father, through Jesus Christ. His death on the cross is forgiveness for us. Our hearts and minds can be pretty messed up places: like a thicket of prickly vines. God’s word has power, to break though, to up root, to make clean.
Trust that Word. Pray it. Let it change you.
