Currents of Faith: Open and Unfolding Reflections

his great oracle of hope was first proclaimed by a nameless prophet whom we call Second Isaiah. Spoken first to Jews living in exile in Babylon around 540 B.C.E., it declared that God would return to Jerusalem, a city that remained devastated from the war fifty years prior, and would redeem and restore it. Probably within fifteen years of this oracle’s proclamation Jews returned to rebuild the city. Over the years the oracle became a message of a hopeful future for Jews, declaring that God would work yet again a new wonder and bring a new and more glorious age. We Christians have inherited this oracle and connect it to the first coming of Jesus, God in the flesh, which we now celebrate at Christmas. But we also see that it can speak of any future coming of God to help people spiritually and physically. The oracle has moved through an evolutionary process from the sixth century B.C.E. to our modern age, as it speaks again and again of God coming to redeem and restore a helpless humanity. As Jesus is the incarnation of God into the human process of existence, in a similar way this oracle of hope is the incarnation of God’s promise into the flow of human history in the form of a spoken promise, a proclamation of hope. God has been speaking to humanity with this oracle for over two thousand years now. It commands us to break into song (Christmas carol or otherwise), for our God will act dramatically to save us. Rejoice, for yet again God will return, God will reign, God will comfort those who have faith to see the divine presence in the world about them. ~ Robert Gnuse