A Man-to-Man Defense Against Panic
From Isaiah 7 – 2 And it was told to the house of David, saying, "Syria's forces are deployed in Ephraim." So his heart and the heart of his people were moved as the trees of the woods are moved in the wind.
3 Then the Lord said to Isaiah, "Go out now to meet Ahaz…"
"Society might reflect," pauses Charles Krauthammer in The Point of It All, "on its own ample appetite for apocalypse."
The opening of Isaiah 7 is just such a juncture. The prophet connects the unbelief in the heart of Ahaz to the unbelief which is contagious and compounded among his people. This, as Krauthammer phrases it, is the appetite for apocalypse. We are prone to believe and to convince one another that the worst may well come. We think ourselves more prepared for it by such ruminations.
But just as the sin of unbelief often enters the cultural bloodstream through one man, so God can stand for faith through one man. He testifies through the ages once and for all through the words of Jesus, yes, but He also hits the same note with lesser instruments. Here, He uses the prophet Isaiah, one man confronting one man with the contradiction between faith and fear. From such tipping points, by God's grace, cultural climates can change.
How many people's hearts go with our hearts when we give in to fear and are moved like the trees in the wind? We either, I suspect, badly over-calculate our influence and move in a kind of stilted self-consciousness, or, when fear begins to embed itself, totally forget the residence of our subsequent decisions. We indulge ourselves in catastrophic and catastrophizing self-pity. What do others matter in the middle of such a vortex?
What difference could a turn of a few degrees toward faith make in the context of a life voyage much longer than today's likeness to a crisis? Feel like it or not, we could be the man or woman on the spot destined to move the heart of someone in crisis, someone, in turn, destined to move a wider culture. If hearts are crestfallen quickly, does it not stand to reason that, by God's grace, they may just as quickly be restored?
3 Then the Lord said to Isaiah, "Go out now to meet Ahaz…"
"Society might reflect," pauses Charles Krauthammer in The Point of It All, "on its own ample appetite for apocalypse."
The opening of Isaiah 7 is just such a juncture. The prophet connects the unbelief in the heart of Ahaz to the unbelief which is contagious and compounded among his people. This, as Krauthammer phrases it, is the appetite for apocalypse. We are prone to believe and to convince one another that the worst may well come. We think ourselves more prepared for it by such ruminations.
But just as the sin of unbelief often enters the cultural bloodstream through one man, so God can stand for faith through one man. He testifies through the ages once and for all through the words of Jesus, yes, but He also hits the same note with lesser instruments. Here, He uses the prophet Isaiah, one man confronting one man with the contradiction between faith and fear. From such tipping points, by God's grace, cultural climates can change.
How many people's hearts go with our hearts when we give in to fear and are moved like the trees in the wind? We either, I suspect, badly over-calculate our influence and move in a kind of stilted self-consciousness, or, when fear begins to embed itself, totally forget the residence of our subsequent decisions. We indulge ourselves in catastrophic and catastrophizing self-pity. What do others matter in the middle of such a vortex?
What difference could a turn of a few degrees toward faith make in the context of a life voyage much longer than today's likeness to a crisis? Feel like it or not, we could be the man or woman on the spot destined to move the heart of someone in crisis, someone, in turn, destined to move a wider culture. If hearts are crestfallen quickly, does it not stand to reason that, by God's grace, they may just as quickly be restored?
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