Season 3 Podcast 88 Let Us Stand Together

Let us Stand TogetherThis morning at 4 am (I am an early riser) I was reading Isaiah Chapter 50. One’s first impression of Isaiah is that he seems, upon a cursory reading, to be talking about a far-away-land that has no relevance to one’s own personal dilemma.  But this time, reading Isaiah, I had an entirely different experience. I felt like Isaiah was talking directly to me. Bad news had made me feel low for several days and I couldn’t seem to shake it off.When I was a little boy, my mother said to me that she was going to quit reading the newspaper and watching the news because it left her with such depression. I could not comprehend what she meant.  Mother was an avid reader and always seemed to have a book in hand. Our black and white TV set had only three channels. In those days there was no late-night TV, and the test pattern didn’t end until 10:30 am at which time the Howdy Doody Show came on.That would have been in the 1950’s. For some reason I was startled by her statement, so much so that it has come back to me hundreds of times over the years. My mother passed away at the happy age of 90, her mind as strong as ever, but I remember her words every time I allow the news to weigh on me, which is often. My wife, Linda, is constantly telling me to quit watching the news because sometimes I fall into a kind of despair for days.   At this writing we have a thirty trillion-dollar debt, open borders, run-away-inflation, war between Ukraine and Russia, threats of nuclear weapons, climbing gas prices, unabated covid pandemic, increasing violence and crime, a break down of law and order, a breakdown of the family, tribalism, declining morals, an inability to discern simple laws of nature, serious charges of corruption in high places, dissembling reporters, corrupt judges, but the list appears endless and what is worse we have leaders who appear to have no comprehension of simple cause and effect. Their denial of any responsibility and shallow solutions increases the problems. So what does that have to do with Isaiah 50. Let’s take a look.  It is short, so let’s work through it concept by concept.\\1 Thus saith the Lord, Where is the bill of your mother’s divorcement, whom I have put away? or which of my creditors is it to whom I have sold you? Behold, for your iniquities have ye sold yourselves, and for your transgressions is your mother put away. (Isaiah 50:1)Of course, the Lord is talking about someone else, right? Wrong! He could just as easily be talking to America today. Our forefathers did not doubt that our nation was built by faith. Listen to the words of George Washington at his First Inaugural Address.“I dwell on this prospect with every satisfaction which an ardent love for my Country can inspire: since there is no truth more thoroughly established, than that there exists in the economy and course of nature, an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness, between duty and advantage, between the genuine maxims of an honest and magnanimous policy, and the solid rewards of public prosperity and felicity: Since we ought to be no less persuaded that the propitious smiles of Heaven, can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right, which Heaven itself has ordained: And since the preservation of the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the Republican model of Government, are justly considered as deeply, perhaps as finally staked, on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.”