OF REEDS & WICKS

This isn't wheat (it's lavender) but just imagine
it to be wheat, for the sake of this blog!

 As the political scene starts heating up with Presidential hopefuls, we're apt to witness a lot of shaming and bravado. “My opponent is a loser.” “Here's some dirt I dug up on him/her.” “I'm better qualified because of this-and-that.” “I can be trusted.” Such propaganda (practiced in everyday situations besides the political arena) prompts me to remember a little passage in Isaiah's prophecy that's easy to skip over.

Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom I delight. I will put my Spirit on him and he will bring justice to the nations.(Isaiah 42:2)

Unlike most rulers of that era, who wanted thrones, opulent living quarters, adoration, and the best horse in the stable to ride, Isaiah looked to a Messiah like this:

He will not shout or cry out, or raise his voice in the streets. A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out. (v.3)

Isaiah's ancient, agrarian audience understood these analogies. The spiritually broken and bruised were like a storm- or human-damaged crop stalk. The spiritually “burned out” could relate to a primitive oil lamp with its nearly spent oil basin and sputtering wick. In contrast to their era's proud and position-grabbing rulers, the future Messiah would teach of God's justice and reach the needs of the poor and suffering.

The phrase “a bruised reed” always fascinated me. Sometimes it brought to mind a mid-1950s family trip to my mother's aunt and uncle's farm in Eastern Montana. Think: windmill pump for water, an outhouse, and wood-stove/kerosene lanterns if a wild storm knocked out electricity. Big changes for a little kid from Los Angeles!

During the trip, my mother wanted to photograph her uncle in his prize wheat field. Although a bit reluctant—perhaps not wanting to waste some beaded wheat stalks by walking over them--he obliged her. I was reminded of this incident in reading Judith Couchman's One Holy Passion (Waterbrook, 1998, p. 84). Of the same Isaiah passage she wrote:

To be spiritually useful to God we must periodically travel the wasteland of brokenness. In this desert God tenderly picks up our shattered pieces and remolds them into the image of His Son. During the redesign He promises, “A bruised reed [I] will not snuff out”....No matter how broken we feel, God won't allow the pain to destroy us.

Jesus takes special note of bruised and sputtering lives. When I feel broken or burned out in my spiritual life, He is able to gently pick me up and help me get going again. When I languish, He waits in love for me to reach out or turn around and see Him, Ready, waiting, loving.

Does that encourage you in your hard times? It does, me.

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