Read
The Lord Is God
7Israel, I am the Lord God,
and the Ethiopians
are no less important to me
than you are.
I brought you out of Egypt,
but I also brought
the Philistines from Crete
and the Arameans from Kir.
8My eyes have seen
what a sinful nation you are,
and I'll wipe you out.
But I will leave a few
of Jacob's descendants.
I, the Lord, have spoken!
9At my command, all of you
will be sifted like grain.
Israelites who remain faithful
will be scattered
among the nations.
And the others will be trapped
like trash in a sifter.
10Some of you are evil,
and you deny
that you will ever get caught.
But you will be killed.
The Lord's Promise
11 In the future, I will rebuild
David's fallen kingdom.
I will build it from its ruins
and set it up again,
just as it used to be.
12Then you will capture Edom
and the other nations
that are mine.
I, the Lord, have spoken,
and my words will come true.
13You will have such a harvest
that you won't be able
to bring in all of your wheat
before plowing time.
You will have grapes left over
from season to season;
your fruitful vineyards
will cover the mountains.
14I'll make Israel prosper again.
You will rebuild your towns
and live in them.
You will drink wine
from your own vineyards
and eat the fruit you grow.
15I'll plant your roots deep
in the land I have given you,
and you won't ever
be uprooted again.
I, the Lord God, have spoken!
Reflect
One pride is worse than any, the religious kind. We are Israelites. We are Judeans. We are Jews. We are Baptists. We are Reformed. We are Methodists. There is always a capital letter. We are The Ones: the right rituals, the right uniforms, the right songs, the right books, the right heroes, the right to judge. But “the Ethiopians are no less important to Me than you are” (9:7).
God is at work where the labels are wrong. The theology is wrong. The rules are wrong. And if we are so right, we have given him the right to judge us, to sift, to scatter, to trash. How deep is our delusion about ourselves? Is it equal to how certain we are about others, about God? Our harvest too much to store, our grapes too numerous to press, our peaches too sweet to eat. What good farmers we are! Or is it we just have the soil, the decayed fruitfulness of someone else’s ruin.
He loves to construct. Build mountains, dig oceans, steam clouds, install suns. He is the Contractor you wish you knew. But this is a root and branch Reno: back to the studs, rip out the rotten, dig down to the footings. “Built from the ruins” of someone’s old house.
Every capital letter Religion is a Reno. But my Reno’s better than yours! We build our steeples, our campuses, our offices, on someone else’s work (1 Corinthians 3:10). We are drinking from wells we haven’t dug. Who lived here, on our patch of history? The rubble we have buried beneath our ambitions, tell a story, someone else’s. What story will our ruins tell, when we are what is Reno’d?
New Creation is not from nothing. That’s the point: he is remaking – not starting again. He never abandons the seed of Abraham. Redemption is the opposite of a blank slate. There is always some pigment left. Otherwise how will we exist in the New Jerusalem? He is building on the ruins of our crumbling temple. We are always a Reno.
Respond
You, “The LORD God, have spoken!” We listen, through the noise of our own thoughts. We grasp a word here and there. What will we retain? Plant our roots deep, into the ancient soil of your story: lessons failed and learned, battles won and lost, hopes come and gone. Write us a good part. So when there is no more tomorrow, our past will rise to meet us and we will not be ashamed.
Alexander Best
Alexander cultivated a network of Christian leaders, OneMission, to promote collaboration, including service to the 15,000 new students arriving at University of Toronto each fall, under the umbrella, ServeToronto. He helped foster the same at the PanAm Games in Toronto and is the former Canadian Director of the Lausanne Movement Canada. He publishes THisToronto, a social media platform promoting & connecting the activities of over 300 ministries and churches in the city."