Dai­ly Reflec­tion
Decem­ber 13, 2012

“I am the Lord, your God, who grasp your right hand; 
It is I who say to you, ‘Fear not, I will help you.’ ”

Isa­iah is proph­esy­ing  to the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty liv­ing in Baby­lon.  Imag­ine the sit­u­a­tion. The Jews have been con­quered by the Baby­lo­ni­ans: their cities have been dis­man­tled;  their sacred tem­ple destroyed; their home­land dev­as­tat­ed. Now exiled in Baby­lon,  they lived as a sub­ject peo­ple, con­tin­u­al­ly  pres­sured to aban­don their sacred Law and tra­di­tions and to adopt the ways of their con­quer­ers. Many were exe­cut­ed for refus­ing to adapt.   It  is hard to imag­ine a more dire situation.

But Isa­iah’s ora­cle promis­es hope: 
“I will help you, says the Lord;
Your redeemer is the Holy One of Israel.”

And after  forty years in exile the Per­sian emper­or per­mits the Jews to return their home­land:
the Lord redeems Israel from cap­tiv­i­ty in Babylon!

We are the New Israel! Advent is here. Not unlike the Jews of old,  the Advent Sea­son invites us to  real­ize our des­per­ate need  for a fuller com­ing of the Lord into our world and into our per­son­al lives.

We lis­ten to the ora­cle of Isa­iah and we hear the promise of hope. We long for a fuller com­ing of the Lord to give us new guid­ance and strength for serv­ing God in every stress-filled area of our lives: per­son­al rela­tion­ships, unem­ploy­ment, finan­cial stress, career fail­ure, health, aging.

And the Lord says to us as He said to the Jews in Baby­lon:
“I am the Lord, your God, who grasp your right hand;
It is I who say to you ‘Fear not, I will help you.’ ”

Our redeemer is the Holy One of Israel!