This is Jill's (and it is brilliant)

(Marissa mentioned that she'd been reading Isaiah 53 with fresh eyes. Beyond just being a description of Jesus, this chapter literally is talking about the Servant of the Lord. This passage is a kind of blueprint for anyone who wants to serve God. With that understand, I re-wrote and paraphrased the chapter.)


What does it mean to be the servant of the Lord?

Be the evidence of life
growing in the middle of death.
Forget about beauty or using your appearance
to attract people to you.

Be prepared to be hated and rejected
Brace yourself for suffering, make pain your friend.
People will think you are nothing
and look away when you are near.

But for those same people -
take their pain and suffering on yourself.
Even though they will say that your torture
if a punishment from God.

God with help you hurt.
Let the evil of others beat you down
for the sake of their peace. Accept their just punishment
it will heal them.

Everyone thinks he knows what is best
for his own life
Yet everyone misses the mark.
If you would be the servant of God
The price for this failure to do what is right
you will take on yourself.

And you will not complain
Though you are abused
exiled
stepped on
harassed
ridiculed
killed.

And you will be.

Who will stand up for you?
You will be all but invisible, as if you were already dead
All this
for the people God loves.

After you are cheated out of what's fair
over and over
- even though you have done nothing wrong -
You'll be buried with the wicked and the rich

The God you serve wants this for you.
But because you allowed Him to make your life
an offering for sin
You will see your legacy
You will cause good to flourish.

In the end
You will see the light of life
and it will have all been worth it.
What you know will allow others to live
because you have taken their sins on yourself.

God will not turn away from you
He sees you
As much as your life is poured out
so the spoils of heaven and earth will pour on you,
because you stood in the way
of destruction
for people who neither deserved it
nor cared about you at all

Become one of them.
Save them.

Mishpatim

From a teaching by Rabbi Boruch Leff entitled God Knows Best...

In Exodus 21, the Jews agree to do and to hear God's command to them...without even knowing all of it! How foolish! No one signs a contract (no wise person anyway) without first reading it. Rabbi Leff says, though, that when you make a promise to God, you make a promise you know you can fulfill and will be in your best interest:

You don't have to ask God for details if He is making you an offer. You trust that God has your best interests in mind, and you know that saying "yes" to God, without knowing any of the details, is the only compelling course of action.

I especially like that phrase, "the only compelling course of action." This is why I put this on my blog here and now. Even though I don't know what the other side looks like, I am leaving my life in Denver behind and moving forward to seminary in Kansas City because "saying 'yes' to God...is the only compelling course of action." There is nothing better I can do, no higher purpose to propel my life torward.

So here goes nothing.

I will soar on wings like eagles, which is to say falling into nothing and trusting the wind to carry me upwards.