Isaiah 2:1-5 reflection
Today, our ministry and kaleo team met to do our fortnightly lectio divina biblical reflection. It was the first time in about four months that our ministry team have all been together - as each one of us has progressively had some well earned holidays.
Our biblical passage that we reflected on was the reading from Isaiah that has the famous vision about the time that nations will beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks etc. I believe there is a statue about this outside the United Nations offices.
It struck me during our reflection how the order in which the judgement and new action goes is not what you would normally expect. It would be easier to draw the order but let me see if I can describe it in words.
Nations stream to God >> learn the ways >> walk the path >> God judges >> people live in peace
I don’t know that it is particularly insightful and I admit I think you can read it more than one way, but it struck me today that the judgement came after the nations had learnt God’s ways and walked God’s path and not before.
In the third reading through (where you listen for what God is saying to you), I felt this:
God’s people are called to a new reality, a new vision that is greater than the now. People of faith can sometimes get little glimpses of this new reality - here and now, now and then. But we never see the whole reality, the whole picture, as that belongs to God not to us. We are the wood - we are not the carpenter.
To live in this greyness takes vulnerability. It is a risk to say we don’t know all of God. It is scary to think that we don’t know everything about what the reign of God will look like or be.