The OT prophets had this prophetic imagination which saw things slant and broke through the inertia of normalcy. They spoke out against complacency, “Don’t get too comfortable. Don’t assume that just because you can’t see the problem, God is complacent too.” The prophets cut through despair. “Don’t get too despairing. Don’t assume that just because you can’t fix the problem, God’s agency is limited too.”
The prophets saw through complacency and despair as if they were opaque curtains and into a strange new world. This new world exists and will exist, they claimed, because Yahweh is more all-pervasive than the injustice within complacent systems and more powerful than the paralysis of despair. Keep your eyes open, they said. Have hope. Yahweh is with and for collective flourishing. The story is not over yet.
In Isaiah 45:1-9, the prophet addresses the people of Judah, dispossessed and dislocated in Babylon, through an imagined conversation between Yahweh and Cyrus. “You think you are small and forgotten, and you think the god you worship is small and forgettable, a second fiddle tribal god. But let me tell you, Yahweh is the one who causes to be what they will cause to be, who can’t be confined to a tribe, or a box, or a nation, or a victory. Yahweh has not forgotten the covenant between you and is even now at work, even in the darkness of your circumstance, using something unexpected as a foreign emperor to bring them back home.” God was the treasure in the darkness.
This capacity to hope is what the prophet wanted to open up in the hearts and minds of his people.
We too have things that press down on us like stones and restrict our movement. They can feel oppressive, even hopeless. But even under the weight of these stones, we are not beyond God’s reach. Yahweh is closer than our breath, closer than our hands and feet. Therefore, these stones do not determine the limits of our future. There are more possibilities ahead than our current circumstances lead us to believe, allow, more than we can yet see.
The darkness does not possess the authority to determine what God can bring to light. In the darkness of our circumstances, Yahweh is with us and for our flourishing. Keep watching. Keep waiting. The story isn’t over yet.
Blessings, Anne