Knowing up from down

Beginning a personal study of Isaiah, so ...

1The vision that Isaiah son of Amoz saw regarding Judah and Jerusalem during the times of the kings of Judah: Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah. Heaven and earth, you're the jury.

Listen to God's case: "I had children and raised them well, and they turned on me. The ox knows who's boss, the mule knows the hand that feeds him, But not Israel.My people don't know up from down. Shame! Misguided God-dropouts, staggering under their guilt-baggage, gang of miscreants, band of vandals— My people have walked out on me, their God, turned their backs on The Holy of Israel, walked off and never looked back. "Why bother even trying to do anything with you  when you just keep to your bullheaded ways? You keep beating your heads against brick walls. Everything within you protests against you. From the bottom of your feet to the top of your head, nothing's working right."

One of the most memorable and tragic lines in all of scripture is in Genesis when God walks through the garden and asks, "Where are you?" You feel the pain of God, a God who has lost his people. God tried to get his people back, by designating a certain tribe as his chosen. But again you feel the pain. "...I raised them well, but they turned on me."

As we journey toward a new year, let us see this notion of turning our backs on God as a real one. Look around you, look at the newspaper, look at what is happening to our world. Tell me that this world hasn't turned its back on God.

But the good news is that though it seems here as if God turned his back on us, as well, we know what is coming. The good news is that unto us a child is born, as Isaiah eventually will tell us. That keeps us going when nothing is working right.