Today’s scripture: Isaiah 28:1-13 (NRSV) (The Message) (KJV) What might God be saying to me?
My thoughts (Terri Brown):
In Isaiah 28:1-13, it appears the people of Isaiah’s time experienced some of the same problems we do today: leadership and authority using their position for other gain and/or acting irresponsibly, people using legal status and ability to consume alcohol freely as an excuse to get drunk and “get away with” inexcusable acts, the imperfection behind perfection in what is strived for in beauty and wealth as where we all think we want to be and are erroneously led, etc.
So today we see media and politicians condoning a variety of acts that may not resonate with our own core values, but we are led by the masses. We believe because someone else believes, we join because someone else joins, and we act the way we act because someone else did. We used to call that “keeping up with the Joneses.” In 2015 it became “Keeping up the Kardashians.”
I know I do not want to be like a Kardashian and never will match the shape or figure of any of the woman (including Cait) or amass the wealth the family has. Nor do I want my life or that of everyone in my family played out on national television. But that is currently the language our nation speaks. Everyone knows about this family. Reality TV is a booming business.
I do volunteer work with young, impressionable children and watch them try to emulate this family, Teen Mom, and other TV personalities. And in my job I teach recovery skills to individuals diagnosed with serious mental illnesses, and these are some of the role models they base their recovery on?
Isaiah 28:11-13 (ESV) states:
11 For by people of strange lips and with a foreign tongue the Lord will speak to this people, 12 to whom he has said, “This is rest; give rest to the weary; and this is repose”; yet they would not hear. 13 And the word of the Lord will be to them precept upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little, there a little, that they may go, and fall backward, and be broken, and snared, and taken.
We are not to be trapped by this notion. The foreign tongue here is the one that does not resonate with our own values. We have all been broken, but I am determined to break out of the mold. I have stepped out of the box and stopped following others. Ironically, this reminds me of the days when we wanted to do the things that all our friends were doing and our parents’ final retort would be, “And if your friends asked you to join them and jump off a bridge, would you do that?”
Most of us did not have a comeback for that. We heard, just as God is asking us now to listen carefully. We thought about this, as God asks us regularly to contemplate the Word. And we did not follow anyone off the bridge or do anything else our parents did not give us permission to do.
Thought for the day: Contemplate this passage today (Isaiah 28:1-13) or any message that may teach you to ponder the Word and be captured by the message. Perhaps God is asking something of you that no one else is doing. Listen!
We encourage you to include a time of prayer with this reading. If you need a place to get started, consider the suggestions on the How to Pray page.