Scripture: Isaiah 42:6-7
I, decease the Lord, have called you in righteousness;
I will take hold of your hand.
I will keep you and will make you
to be a covenant for the people
and a light for the Gentiles,
to open eyes that are blind,
to free captives from prison
and to release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness.

Thought for the Day: I wish everyone in the world who considers themselves religious—and I mean people of all religions, would sit down for a minute and think about this passage from Isaiah. We are called in righteousness. Too many “religious” people take this to a fundamentalist extreme, interpreting it to mean that they are right and everyone else is wrong. But that is not at all what this passage means, nor is it the way Jesus interprets it much later.

In Scripture, righteousness always refers to God, not to humans. This is God calling us because of God’s nature, and Isaiah makes it clear that the righteousness of God is nothing like the way we act as humans. Here, in this physical reality, we are blind, and imprisoned in a dark dungeon. We see the world through a very dark and cloudy lens, yet we constantly make claims about the nature of reality as if we actually know anything about the nature of reality.

There is not a single religion on the planet that can claim to have an exclusive bead on the truth. We are all called to awaken. This world we’ve created is built on the flimsiest of precepts, and on the backs of people who have nothing, whom our corporations take advantage of to build our cars, our clothes, and our technology. There is nothing righteous about our current existence.

Isaiah reminds us that God is an agent of change, though, and sounds an alarm to wake us up. In his time, he was ignored, and his society met with disaster. So, I wonder if we will simply continue to turn off the alarm clock being sounded by frakking, injection mining and slave labor, ignoring the warning that sounds louder each day? Will we simply continue to bury our heads deeper in our pillows until we finally destroy ourselves? Or will we finally wake up and answer God’s call to be agents of loving change, and enter the world with the intention that we will do our best to end the injustices we’ve brought upon ourselves? The choice is, as it ever was, and ever shall be, ours.

Prayer:  Wake us up, Lord! Change our hearts, Lord! Help us see that the shadows on the wall are just that—shadows, and that reality is hidden somewhere underneath this unjust and hate-filled world we have artificially created. Amen.