The Newness of Life

Isaiah 65:17-25

Today's passage paints such a great picture of life lived in a world filled with peace and joy. God's promise that God will create a place where the sound of weeping will no longer be heard or where people will live a full life filled with prosperity truly brings hopeful peace to my heart. I don't know about you, but that's a place I want to live in.

God also says that God's relationship with the people will be one of constant, unending presence. "Before they call I will answer, while they are yet speaking I will hear." are words from God which are meant to help the Israelites understand that God isn't going anywhere, God will always be there.

Many Scholars believe that Isaiah was written over the course of a couple of centuries. Events described within the story as told by Isaiah begin around 740 BCE (the year King Uzziah died) to 515 BCE (The year the temple was rebuilt). There are those who hold on to the idea that Isaiah was written by one person over the course of about 65 years, using the timeline between the year Uzziah died and when Isaiah was believed to have died during King Manasseh of Judah's reign.

As much as people can be divided on when Isaiah was written and by whom it was written, the people of Israel in the time it was written were living through several of their own divisions. Geography, ideology, and economy are some of the separations the Israelites lived through. The last chapters of Isaiah are meant to be words from the prophet in saying God will end these divisions and at the end of those divisions will be a life where hope is fulfilled.

Those prophetic words ring loud and true today. We live in a world deeply divided by the same things. Borders separate loved ones and impede humanitarian efforts, ideologies create an "either, or" mentality (either you're with us or you're not), economies separate those who have and want to have more from those who have less and continue to have less.

God calls us to live as a people united. Jesus teaches us about this kind of love by speaking out against the same divisions of his day. Gentiles, Samaritans, people with illness, beggars, tax-collectors (aka traitors), and so much more were despised and separated from "true believers". Jesus went to these people and told them they were no longer excluded from God's love, and as proof Jesus ate with them, taught them, and healed them while at the same time breaking very religious laws of his day. Almost as though Jesus himself lived as one of them - an outcast without a home.

Isaiah prophesies to a people who will one day live in unified peace. Jesus came to us with the hope to help us understand the same. The rest is up to us.