December 11, 2016

So in response to the weekly focus of “our strength and consolation,” and in light of the text of the scripture in Isaiah 40:28-31, which makes grand proclamations about God, we too will try to speak some proclamations about God and our world. For if we are to play our role in the coming realm of God's peace which we have been promised through Divine covenant, then we must seek our strength for perseverance and bold witness in God's own presence in our midst. Anything short of this, I will suggest, is really nothing at all. The text's questions of us, "Have you not known? Have you not heard?" are powerfully appropriate in a world where the cultural consciousness of God had been dead for almost 50 years. What will 'resting in Christ' mean for us who are already weary? Why is rest required for strength? Why is power made perfect in weakness? Why shall the last indeed be first in the Divine realm? What do these subversions of our conventional thinking about strength found in the scriptures tell us about what will be required of us in our own day and age? ...these are the angles into the text which I will be exploring in our worship on Sunday.