Awakening Creativity in Prayer
Each moment is pregnant with new possibilities waiting to be born, alive with new beginnings, God’s secrets not yet heard, God’s dreams not yet fulfilled. These were the thoughts that lodged in my mind as I meditated on Isaiah 48:6-8 this morning.
Well, to her credit, she at least gives an address. Let's drive on over, shall we.
Isaiah 48
6"You have heard; now see all this;
and will you not declare it?
From this time forth I announce to you new things,
hidden things that you have not known.
7They are created now, not long ago;
before today you have never heard of them,
lest you should say, 'Behold, I knew them.'
8You have never heard, you have never known,
from of old your ear has not been opened.
For I knew that you would surely deal treacherously,
and that from before birth you were called a rebel.
Interesting, especially that last part. Hardly complimentary. Let's check out the neighborhood.
1Hear this, O house of Jacob,
who are called by the name of Israel,
and who came from the waters of Judah,
who swear by the name of the LORD
and confess the God of Israel,
but not in truth or right.
2For they call themselves after the holy city,
and stay themselves on the God of Israel;
the LORD of hosts is his name.
3"The former things I declared of old;
they went out from my mouth, and I announced them;
then suddenly I did them, and they came to pass.
4Because I know that you are obstinate,
and your neck is an iron sinew
and your forehead brass,
5 I declared them to you from of old,
before they came to pass I announced them to you,
lest you should say, 'My idol did them,
my carved image and my metal image commanded them.'
6"You have heard; now see all this;
and will you not declare it?
From this time forth I announce to you new things,
hidden things that you have not known.
7They are created now, not long ago;
before today you have never heard of them,
lest you should say, 'Behold, I knew them.'
8You have never heard, you have never known,
from of old your ear has not been opened.
For I knew that you would surely deal treacherously,
and that from before birth you were called a rebel.
9 "For my name’s sake I defer my anger,
for the sake of my praise I restrain it for you,
that I may not cut you off.
10Behold, I have refined you, but not as silver;
I have tried you in the furnace of affliction.
11 For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it,
for how should my name be profaned?
My glory I will not give to another.
12"Listen to me, O Jacob,
and Israel, whom I called!
I am he; I am the first,
and I am the last.
13My hand laid the foundation of the earth,
and my right hand spread out the heavens;
when I call to them,
they stand forth together.
14"Assemble, all of you, and listen!
Who among them has declared these things?
The LORD loves him;
he shall perform his purpose on Babylon,
and his arm shall be against the Chaldeans.
15 I, even I, have spoken and called him;
I have brought him, and he will prosper in his way.
16 Draw near to me, hear this:
from the beginning I have not spoken in secret,
from the time it came to be I have been there."
And now the Lord GOD has sent me, and his Spirit.
17Thus says the LORD,
your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel:
"I am the LORD your God,
who teaches you to profit,
who leads you in the way you should go.
18 Oh that you had paid attention to my commandments!
Then your peace would have been like a river,
and your righteousness like the waves of the sea;
19 your offspring would have been like the sand,
and your descendants like its grains;
their name would never be cut off
or destroyed from before me."
20 Go out from Babylon, flee from Chaldea,
declare this with a shout of joy, proclaim it,
send it out to the end of the earth;
say, "The LORD has redeemed his servant Jacob!"
21 They did not thirst when he led them through the deserts;
he made water flow for them from the rock;
he split the rock and the water gushed out.
22 "There is no peace," says the LORD, "for the wicked."
So, anyone want to take those verses, in their context, and come up with any way of making them say that "Each moment is pregnant with new possibilities waiting to be born"?
First, who is God addressing? Israel. What is He saying? Well, He seems rather upset with them. He talks about how do seem to be only wanting to put on the show of being His people, but they aren't doing it in truth and in the right. He calls them obstinate, and that they would have tried to credit the things He did for them to the false gods they were constantly worshiping. One can think of the golden calf in the wilderness, when Aaron declared that it was the god that had led them out of Egypt, as an example of that.
God is not happy with them, but He is not done with them. He is refining them, but in a furnace of affliction. He does this for His ownke, that His name will not be profaned, and that no one would give to another, probably idols and false gods and demons, the glory properly due to Him.
There is not the whit of a call here for some kind of mystical practices in prayer, like the lectio divina this Sojrone wants to encourage. If anything, this is a call to Israel to repent for being idolators, rebels, and traitors to God.
Perhaps part of what happened while Jesus was alone in prayer was that he learned new ways to pray, new patterns that had the disciples hungering for what they observed
And right about here, we have something I would guess is closely akin to blasphemy, perhaps even the thing itself--trying to defend one's contemplative mystical practices by creating fictions that Jesus maybe/might have/could have practiced such things, even though there is NOTHING in the Gospels that says that, not even a hint.
This article from Sojo is disgusting. The Bible is subjected to misuse and abuse from this writer.
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