A Life that Glows in Darkness: Part I

Sometimes we don't know what to expect from the situations around us. We'll play scenarios again and again in our heads, maybe even with different outcomes each time. Have you ever gone to a job interview or had a talk with a friend that you didn't want to have? You run over all the possible sequence of events that could occur in your head and prepare answers or sentences for all of the potential scenarios. Yet when the real events  occur, in my life anyway, I have never once predicted the exact scenario nor anticipated the emotions that occurred during the situation. This could possibly be because I haven't been blessed with the gift of prophecy or just because it's a human trait to never fully be able to predict the behaviours and actions of the people around us; or sometimes even ourselves. 

Isaiah 58, however, tells us of all the amazing divine encounters we could experience by putting our pride aside and bringing God's goodness to earth. 

“If you get rid of unfair practices,

    quit blaming victims,
    quit gossiping about other people’s sins,
If you are generous with the hungry
    and start giving yourselves to the down-and-out,
Your lives will begin to glow in the darkness,
    your shadowed lives will be bathed in sunlight.
I will always show you where to go.
    I’ll give you a full life in the emptiest of places—
    firm muscles, strong bones.
You’ll be like a well-watered garden,
    a gurgling spring that never runs dry.
You’ll use the old rubble of past lives to build anew,    rebuild the foundations from out of your past.
You’ll be known as those who can fix anything,
    restore old ruins, rebuild and renovate,
    make the community livable again."

Isaiah 58:9-12 (The Message)

This passage stands out in my mind because it talks about all the things I want in my life. I want a life that will glow in the darkness. I want to always know where to go and I want to live a life that is full. I want firm muscles, strong bones, and considering where my life is right now I want to be someone that can rebuild a foundation from out of my past. I want to take the pieces of life and faith that seem worthless to other people and build something strong and beautiful out of it. I want to be able to fix the things that are old and broken and build the things that seem impossible to create. So how do I get from here to there? How do I reach these aspirations that seem difficult and even impossible?

There are five things in this passage that are recommended to change our relationship with God and ultimately our entire lives. Three of these five things are things that we must stop doing while the other two are things we must begin to do. Because there are five things to look at in this passage I'm only going to talk about the first three recommended changes in  my post today. I will look at the other two at some point next week but I hope you can reflect on these ideas over the weekend! The three things that we must stop doing are (i) allowing unfair practices, or as the NIV calls it allowing the "yoke of oppression;" (ii) blaming, judging, and accusing those who are hurting; and (iii) gossiping. 

Although the fist three things are different requirements they all have one thing in common: they are actions that come at the expense of other people. 

The first one I wanted to talk about is gossip. It doesn't matter how often I feel entitled to tell the world of other people's faults, downfalls, or mess-ups gossip is gossip is gossip. And my definition of gossip is the removal of honour from another person. Furthermore, the secular dictionary defines gossip as "idle talk" so no matter how you put it or how you want to look at it gossip is never seen as a positive thing. It never brings honour and it never builds a person up. 1 Thessalonians 5:11 tells us that we should "encourage one another and build each other up." Therefore, gossip does the exact opposite of what we're told to do. 

Blaming, judging, and accusing, additionally, were never our job to begin with. Usually when we blame people for anything it's because something has gone wrong and we don't want to deal with the situation but would rather just cast blame on someone and hope that they would deal with it or be punished by it. By blaming and accusing people we're not focused on finding a solution but merely drawing attention to the problem. Our job is to seek after God and in doing so find answers and solutions to the problems around us (and often discover that our problems are really nothing worth writing home about anyways). Judging, furthermore, was never meant to be our responsibility but God's, our duty isn't to judge but to forgive, not to blame but to love (Luke 6:37; John 13:34). By blaming, judging, and accusing we're not being forgiving or loving we're just creating more problems. 

Lastly we come to "allowing unfair practices." This responsibility is different from the last two because it assumes that we are not the people that are creating the unfair practices we're merely the people that are allowing them to continue. It doesn't depend on our own actions like the last two but it depends on our ability to stop another person's actions. If we aren't creating social injustice but also aren't stopping it from occurring where does that put us on the "good person scale?" (this isn't a real scale and I hope you don't use this scale to measure how good you are). I don't really know how to explain this without using an example so here is an extreme example to help show what I'm trying to say. 

I go out and buy a new pair of jeans for $200. Let's make them Nudi jeans for the purpose of this story and because those are raw denim they're not suppose to get wet for one plus years. I then decide to go for a stroll in the park in my sweet new swag. While walking through the park I see a child feeding some ducks by the pond and I think to myself, "oh that's cute." A few minutes later I look at the pond and somehow the child has fallen into the water and is now trashing and splashing because he doesn't know how to swim. I look around and no one is there so of course I run and jump into the water and save the drowning child and bring him to safety. I feel pretty good about myself but in reality I would have done anything I could to stop the child from dying in front of me. 

In this story I risked losing my $200 jeans in order to save a child's life. Two-hundred dollars may seem like a lot of money for jeans but what about higher amounts of money, or possibly something more valuable than money like time or friendships? The reason why it's easy to brush off social injustice in our communities is because although we didn't start the problem the solution is always going to cost us something. Yet, I don't think there's a single person that would read this post and argue that they wouldn't jump into the pond to save the child's life. If we're all wanting and able to stop unfair practices, social injustice, and death then why aren't we doing it? In my case I find it daunting to think of all the things in Victoria that need "fixing." Yet, I remind myself that I can't do everything. If you didn't know this yet let me be the one to tell you and free you from daunting thoughts: You can't do everything. None of us can do everything. It's a little upsetting, I know. But I can do something! You can do something too! In fact, we can all do something. And a lot of somethings might one day be everything. 

I know in this verse I've stated and overstated the importance of stopping social injustice however unfair practices can come in many different forms. Think of the person who is unfairly picked on or excluded in your school. Think of the middle schooler that showed up to youth not knowing anyone. Think of the professor that the students make fun of and always choose to skip class on. Think of the dogs that need someone to walk them at the SPCA. Think of your friend who was late for class and didn't have time to stop for a coffee (okay this one is a stretch but it would still be a nice gesture and I've appreciated it almost to the point of tears in the past). These battles may seem so small they don't even seem worth fighting but when we show God obedience in the small things we make ourselves available to the big things. These may seem as though they're nothing but in reality they are always worth something.   

That's what you get for today. Stop gossip, because it removes honour and tears people down instead of building them up. Stop blaming, because it doesn't create a solution it merely draws attention to a problem. And find a way to stop unfair practices because you are wanting and able to do something (not everything, but something). Hope you have a lovely weekend!