The Lord does not delay his promise…
Do you hope in the promise of the kingdom to come?
The people of Isaiah’s time have been in a state of despair but, as they near the end of their exile in Babylon, God calls upon them not to lose hope: Jerusalem’s service is at an end, her guilt is expiated. God promises a straight, flat path home for them through the desert – an extraordinary promise in a landscape that usually meanders up and over mountains and through valleys. God as shepherd will carry the lambs in his bosom, a source of salvation to all who hope in him. Psalm 85 develops God’s promise with a focus on salvation – the intangible fulfillment of the promise of a kingdom filled with kindness and truth, justice and peace. Hope is no longer hung solely upon a tangible path to follow home, but upon the intangible elements of true relationship with God.
When, in Mark’s Gospel, John the Baptist appears in the desert, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, his baptism does have a physical, tangible element – but the tangible rite celebrates an intangible reality to which we need to open our very selves. For true repentance to take place, true conversion must happen in our hearts. John can proclaim the people capable of repentance, but only Jesus can transform those hearts, bringing them the hope of salvation. The Second Letter of Peter also focuses upon repentance as a path to new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. If we are focused on our ultimate perfect union with God’s love, then we will live with our whole life is directed toward that intangible kingdom that is our hope for the future.
We live with a daily tension between our temporal, tangible reality and the eternal, intangible kingdom to come. Our hope cannot be found in the tangible, but in the promise God has made to us and our ability to invest in that promise and to allow our hearts to be transformed by it. This is the value we want to fuel our existence, a life conducted in holiness and devotion, that we might be ready for the kingdom when it comes in its fullness.
This post is based on Fr. Pat’s Scripture class.
Image source: www.wordclouds.com
No comments:
Post a Comment