“Who has directed the Spirit of the Lord
or instructed him as his adviser?
Whom did he consult?
Who gave him understanding?
Who taught him the right way?
Who taught him knowledge?
Who informed him about the way of understanding?”
~Isaiah 40:13-14 (GW).
The classic schoolyard ‘theological’ debate takes place...
“I believe in God, do you?” enquires one little girl. A boy of the same age quips, “No such thing!” “Is too,” she snaps, “No way,” he says... and so it goes on for several interchanges.
The girl then changes tack. “Okay, then who made your Dad?” she says. Thinking more intently he says, “Well... my grandma and grandad, of course... silly!” [She thinks, “Got you!”] “Well who made them, then, smartypants?”
Check mate.
It’s the age-old question... “Who made God?”
Re-Starting Isaiah
Isaiah re-commences at chapter 40, which is affectionately known as ‘the Book of Comfort’.
The section that this above passage comes from is rather reminiscent of Job 28 and Proverbs 8 where the writer muses about the mysteries of life, wisdom and God — in sum, the source of it all.
It’s not until we start to think on these questions above that we start to deduce the magnificence of this wondrous mystery of creation’s initiation and propagation — how it keeps going. And God’s behind it all. What an incredible Divine being God must be.
Re-discovering God
The way Isaiah chapter 40 finishes it leaves us thinking that going back to the source of life and wisdom leads us to God — the Saviour of the world who masterminds resurrection from any situation and status in response to our faith.
It is sincerely the most astonishing truth. God is victory.
Only did we get here from understanding initially that God is first, foremost, and utterly beginningless.
God was, always. Comprehend that.
The sort of convoluted messes we get into as we cogitate at length in the wrong direction about God proves how confounding it is to fight God on the facts of his nature. Some people running the opposite agenda will say, “Well, what difference does it all make?” They strip the profoundest point of life completely bare of meaning.
But it’s those who can hold the great wonders of life in tension — acknowledging it must be God, beginning and end — who live the reconciled life; the life at peace with the spiritual mysteries our hearts always yearn for.
Rediscovering God is the biggest blessing anyone can travel to. To reach that place, high on the peak, to enjoy God, to have no more questions of doubt, to be thrilled in the Spirit... this is the majestic life.
Will we let this reality escape us? Or will we “taste and see that the Lord is good,” as the psalmist compels us in Psalm 34:8?
Discoverable afresh... that is our eternally open invocation to, and of, the Lord.
© 2011 S. J. Wickham.
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