Mighty to Save

Saturday, March 2, 2013                                 Isaiah 63:1-8

Scott Baker

One of my favorite books, so much so that I reread it every other year or so, is The Count of Monte Cristo.  I’m not exactly sure why it catches me so.  The earliest thing that grabbed me was the way the lead character, Dantès, used his imprisonment as an opportunity to improve his mind.  More recently, I’ve been taken with the themes of the limits of human justice.  But at the end of the day, everyone knows that The Count of Monte Cristo is a book about revenge.

On one level, a part of me thrills to a story of righteous vengeance.  Yet at the same time, I feel shocked in a way when I read passages like Isaiah 63:1-8.  It’s a passage about God taking vengeance on Edom for their oppression of the Israelites.  My initial reaction is that God isn’t supposed to be violent, God's supposed to be loving!  But it is precisely that love that demands justice.

When we hear stories about human trafficking, war, sexual violence, and other atrocities, we don’t hope that God will sit it out.  We expect the love and justice of God to stir to action.  We long for a God that is “mighty to save.”  And that’s just what we have here in Isaiah.  We have a God who is as angry as we could ever imagine at the injustice God's people suffer.

In The Count of Monte Cristo, Dantès finally realizes at the end that human justice is wholly limited by the bounds of humanity.  And the Israelites awaken to this too.  Only a holy God, one “mighty to save,” can be entrusted with the scales of justice.  So much of our lives today are taken up with tallying accounts and ensuring that we maintain an aggrieved state.  The challenge of this passage, and of the story of God in the world, is to recognize that the God of the Universe is not someone who we ask to be our assistant in settling scores, but to whom we surrender our complaints, and praise for God's gracious deeds, praiseworthy acts, mercy, and the abundance of God's steadfast love.

Prayer: Dear God, help me to trust in your power, because you are mighty to save, rather than lean on my own understanding.

Daily Challenge: Surrender your grievances against anyone who has wronged you to the justice of God.