December 5, 2023
Micah 4:6-13
Advent, Day 3
In that day,” declares the LORD, “I will gather the lame; I will assemble the exiles and those I have brought to grief. I will make the lame my remnant, those driven away a strong nation.”
This verse is fascinating to me.
Honestly, it challenges me and at the same time encourages me.
I am astounded by the God that self-identifies as the one who brought people to grief. There's no running from it. Through Micah's voice the God of the universe owns that fact that God has brought people to grief.
What do we do that?
How do we respond to it?
Let's be clear, this prophet is writing to a people in exile. A people that was indeed being judged by the divine. So, perhaps my (and maybe your) immediate response needs to be a bit tempered. The grief here is due to the experience of exile and judgement.
OK, fair enough.
Yet, the focus here is not on the judgement. But, it is on the other aspect of this, namely, that God will gather, assemble, and make strong.
In the midst of grief and exile God is at work doing something that will undo all of it.
This gives me hope.
I don't know about you, but when life gets messy I wonder, “where is God?” It turns out that God is working in the background and that I can hope that there will be a great undoing. If God does this for those whom were disobedient and under judgement, how much more so will God do this for those this side of the resurrection?
As I read and ponder these words and thinking about what the prophets said about exile and the remnant, I realize more and more how the message of resurrection and reconciliation in Christ carried such power.
Advent allows us to enter into the waiting through holy imagination that those before us lived through. They lived through the hope of the coming of the undoing. We get to experience the undoing every day.
Today I'm thinking about, “Will I recognize the undoing of grief all around me?”
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