"Here’s what I’ve learned: God is with me. God is not just watching from above. God will not decide whether I live or die by how often I pray. God is with me the most when I am at my most lonely and afraid. God will be there for my son. When I call for help, I feel God’s presence in calm and peace. As God tells the reader in Isaiah 45:7 (KJV): “I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.” I interpret these enigmatic words not to mean that God literally created and gave me my cancer, but that God is in all things, both the light and darkness, the peace and the evil. Where evil exists, God does not absent God-self."
Ana Silver
article in Christian Century by Elizabeth Palmer
8/7/18
I came across Ana Silver's writing while perusing "Christian Century" online. I was unfamiliar with this poet who passed away in August at the age of 49. This is lovely, insightful writing, but truthfully I found the passage from Isaiah unsettling. Does God create evil? Despite the claim recently made by a patient I met in a skilled nursing this week that the King James translation is the most accurate of all translations, there are other worthy translations. The NRSV reads: "I form light and create darkness, I make weal and woe." Yes, I had to look up weal, and it means prosperity or well-being. So, according to Isaiah, it seems God is willing to claim it all: light, darkness, wellness, and woe. God is casting no thing and no one aside.
I know the temptation to simply pluck out the most uplifting passages of the Bible and let the rest go. While at times comforting words are needed, sometimes we do need to ponder the more difficult or troubling parts because we, too, are being called to hold light, darkness, wellness, and woe. Yes, it is hard to not give light and goodness preferential treatment. Most of us do want to feel good, but sometimes that is just not possible.
Isaiah 45:18-19 has me also thinking about chaos, and that maybe chaos does not really exist: that there is an order to everything. It could be that when our vision and understanding fall short, what we think we are seeing and experiencing is chaos, but really what we are experiencing is the inability to see over our current horizon. Maybe we are called to "unknow" or "un-label" our assumptions (which often cause us to be feel separate and afraid), and simply learn to be present even when we do not understand - to be present with that which we cannot name.
"For thus says the LORD,
who created the heavens
(he is God!),
who formed the earth and made it
(he established it;
he did not create it a chaos,
he formed it to be inhabited!):
I am the LORD, and there is no other.
I did not speak in secret,
in a land of darkness:
I did not say to the offspring of Jacob,
"Seek me in chaos."
I the LORD speak the truth,
I declare what is right."
I actually find this passage comforting; it implies that while there is an order that I may not understand, I can trust it. Yes, the Bible can be enigmatic, however, Jesus was very clear about loving God, and loving our neighbors as ourselves. This is our project, and it is enough for a lifetime. We must remember that despite the mystery that is God, Jesus called God, "Abba", one of his heart and his soul, and one he spent much time with. Such intimacy is possible, even in the presence of the unknowable.
Jesus and Isaiah remind me that we have been created to inhabit this life - all of it, no picking and choosing what we think are the best parts, because in every moment, every inch of the journey, there God is. It is a journey to love. Blessed be.
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