Daily Devotion – May 1, 2020 – Roy Hammerling
Isaiah 42:14-21
“For a long time I have held my peace. . . now I will cry out like a woman in labor. . . turn the darkness before them into light, the rough places into level ground.”
Don’t Hold Your Peace
While we all hope that the time of quarantine is almost at an end, nevertheless there are times that, if you are like me, we all feel like shouting out in frustration. The above Isaiah passage is remarkable in that Isaiah says he has held his peace too long and now he needs to shout, but in his instance, he cries out like a woman in labor. But to what purpose? I shout to just get something off my chest. Isaiah shouts to give birth to something better. Perhaps we need to cry out for a purpose; we should not hold our peace but seek a birth out of these painful days. But for what? Isaiah says that he will turn the dark places into light and make the rough places into level ground. Perhaps the time has come for us not to hold our peace anymore. We need to shout out in our pain and seek the birth of something new. A better society that takes care of the poor, the needy, the lost, and lonely. During these days of quarantine our anxieties can spike to a new level and expose the problems around us. At times it seems as if God has held God’s peace waiting for the right moment to move the people of this world to make the world God intended it to be. What will be born out of this quarantine? Who knows, but if Isaiah has anything to say about it, perhaps we should hold our peace no more and let something truly wonderful be born out of these pains we feel today.
Prayer: Hold your peace no more, O Lord, and open our eyes so we may see you; unstop our mouths so we might cry out to you; and unbind our hands so we may grasp you. Tomorrow Lord is soon enough, though long in coming. Amen
Prayer Concerns: For all who are blind and deaf to God’s cry.
