Lenten Devotions 3

Now that Lent has come and gone and we are now officially into the season of Easter, I want to do something I meant to do throughout Lent. As you may know, Fourth Church puts out daily devotions that are available via email, on the website, or in print each week. Most of the time, these are written by members of the Fourth Church staff. During special seasons of the church year, like Lent, we also invite members of the congregation to contribute to these. This year's Lent devotions were excellent, and several of them were written by Fourth Church youth or adults associated with the youth program. As something of a Lenten retrospective, I want to post these Fourth Church Youth devotions on this blog, in case you missed them before. Thanks to all who worked hard on writing these!

Scripture Reading: Isaiah 44:24–45:7

Reflection
The beautiful words of this ancient oracle are remarkable because this is the only place in the Bible that a non-Israelite is called God’s messiah (“anointed”)—a title normally reserved for Israel’s kings and priests and later applied to Jesus. Anticipating objections to this shocking claim, the prophet reminds his audience that God can act however God pleases, even if it means using the Persian king Cyrus to accomplish the salvation of Israel.

But this passage is even more remarkable for being one of the few places in the Bible that clearly articulates a fascinating, though extremely challenging theology: if God is truly in control of history (and our individual lives), then God is responsible for both the good parts and the bad parts. Our euphemistic English translations of this passage obscure the force of this theology. Let those with ears to hear listen to a more accurate rendering: “I form light and create darkness, I make good and create evil; I the Lord do all these things.”

As we prepare our hearts and minds for Holy Week during the season of Lent, we are confronted with one of the most mystifying paradoxes of the Christian faith: an unquestionably evil act of horrific violence and gross injustice is at the heart God’s work of redemption and salvation.

Sometimes I find myself objecting to the cross as defiantly as those Jews who would have resisted calling Cyrus their messiah. To this objection Isaiah offers a challenging possibility: perhaps God is in fact behind both the good and the bad. What this might mean for the mystery of the cross and the mystery of our own lives is worth exploring.

Prayer
Dear God, open my heart and mind to the mysteries of your ways as I face the difficulties of life and the realities of the cross. Amen.

Written by John Vest, Associate Pastor for Youth Ministry