“I will give you the treasures of darkness and riches hidden in secret places, so that you may know that it is I, the Lord, the God of Israel, who call you by your name.” – Isaiah 45:3
Recently, I was rushing to prepare a devotion for a Youth Ministry planning meeting, and at the last minute my brain was asking a typical procrastinator’s question, “What should I share?!”
At first, my mind went to a book that a small group of my best young pastor friends shared. Our group is affectionately called “Anti-Racist Radicals,” and so it should not be surprising that the book I thought of is called Joining God in the Great Unraveling. My mind went to a quote from late in the Introduction that Jamie shared, which basically said, “We as the US Church come up with so many contingency plans for the future, and we live as if these plans can predict the future — just look at the great Missional movements of the last few decades. But so much of what we are doing still acts like the story is about us like we are the primary movers and agents in the story, and like we can and should have all this control. What about God’s role in all of this?” The book goes on to focus on stories of marginalized people who have always been in the experience of living while things are unraveling.
Thinking about the quote, I started to get shy, being the conflict-avoidant person that I am, and I turned to a familiar passage in Isaiah as a would-be alternative: Isaiah 45:3, quoted above. “Treasures of,” or “hidden in darkness,” as another translation says. “Maybe I’ll focus on that instead of the unraveling of the Church and thinking of God’s role in it,” I thought. But the Spirit led me to, for the first time, look at the original context of this passage which has given me so much hope in the past…The LORD is talking to King Cyrus, the Persian king, who would conquer Babylon—under whose hegemony the Israelites would be. The words directly before this verse say, “I will break in pieces the doors of bronze and cut through the bars of iron.” Let me use some emojis to express exactly the emotional progression I made in about five minutes, in deciding to use these two together:
🤓…😮😧😬🥶😨😰😰😰😱🤯🤬…🥺…🤪😅😂🤣…😎🤙🏽🤘🏽…🤗😇🙏🏽
I was struck by the fact that God is basically saying “I’m causing the unraveling of the Empire here.” But also, the LORD promises to stay the God of Israel, to guide and direct them. As we see the unraveling of so many things around us and even in our shared way of life, let’s not forget that God is at work in this mess and that we can draw wisdom from historically marginalized people, whose lives have often been unraveled by the realities of supremacy culture as it steals and usurps power. As we grow in a faithful and meaningful life of discipleship, let’s remember that it has never been only about the people with whom “we denominate ourselves.”
Lord Jesus Christ, as your love unravels things, heal our blinded eyes to see the othered disciples who have already begun to grow into the wisdom needed for this moment. Amen.
Jason Villegas is the pastor of Murfreesboro UMC