Sweet relief after hard times knowing that better times are ahead. Recognizing what is transient and what is transcendent. These themes spoke to me from Isaiah 40. The passage begins with a mandate to comfort a community that has struggled under hardship and oppression; “Comfort, give comfort to my people.” Jerusalem’s people have been through judgement, hard times, enslavement, and persecution but now it's time for comfort. Comfort brings a feeling of safety and gives room to lift hearts in anticipation, prepare the way for the divine and it is time to speak. But what can one speak about after such hard times? How does one find a voice again, after being voiceless? I read, “A voice says, "Cry out!"/I answer, "What shall I cry out?" The next lines reflect on the transience of living things, "All flesh is grass, and all their glory like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower wilts...” Speak? How can I? Things are terrible and have been terrible. What’s the point? We are all going to die. We could be destroyed instantly at the merest touch of God’s breath. How can one speak out amidst so much uncertainty and after so much struggle? The answer comes in the next lines. Our ideas, and communities and beliefs stand longer than our bodies do. “So then, the people is the grass. Though the grass withers and the flower wilts, the word of our God stands forever." How can we each work towards finding and using our voice towards the transcendent – those things that outlast our physical wants and short-term emotional needs? How can we recognize “blade of grass” things in our lives (deadlines, grades, exams, missing the bus) for what they are? How can we prioritize the transcendent? In experiencing “comfort”, the history and legacy of struggle and oppression do not disappear. And yet, one's voice can return. Isaiah 40 ends with the questioner knowing exactly what to cry out, at the top of one’s voice – to be a herald of good news and to joyously announce and anticipate divine strength and comfort - “Like a shepherd he feeds his flock/in his arms he gathers the lambs/Carrying them in his bosom, and leading the ewes with care.”
Alison Dell, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Biology and Interdisciplinary Studies
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