Three reflections - one passage #2
| This is what the sovereign Lord, the Holy One of Israel says: "In repentance and rest is your salvation in quietness and trust is your strength but you would have none of it. You said 'No, we will flee on horses.' Therefore you will flee! You said 'We will ride off on swift horses!' Therefore your pursuers will be swift!" (Isaiah30:15-16) |
I love the Afrikaans name for a bagpipes - "Doedelsak" = "doedel" (tune or ditty) + "sak" (bag). It is so onomatopoeic.
Henry Drummond described the soul as the "chamber with elastic and contractile walls, which can be expanded with God as its guest, illimitably but which without God shrinks and shrivels until every vestige of the Divine is gone and God's image is left without God's Spirit."
We have the choice between being vuvuzelas or bagpipes. The key difference is not only in the mono-tone of the one compared to the variety of the other, but in the bag, which, when filled, allows the piper to play a much longer note than the human lung can blow the vuvuzela!
Isaiah records God's Word to those who think they can keep going in their own strength. The bottom line? In the Rat Race the rats win. They're like vuvuzelas - mono tone and short of note.
In repentance, rest, quietness and trust is salvation and strength.
Soul-care means we fill the "sak" (our souls) with the "doedel" (the music and breath of God's Spirit and presence) and we can play a whole tune instead of a single blaring note!
The old hymn says it best:
Breathe on me, breath of God,
Fill me with life anew,
That I may love what Thou dost love,
And do what Thou wouldst do.
Breathe on me, breath of God,
Until my heart is pure,
Until with Thee I will one will,
To do and to endure.
Breathe on me, breath of God,
Blend all my soul with Thine,
Until this earthly part of me
Glows with Thy fire divine.
Breathe on me, breath of God,
So shall I never die,
But live with Thee the perfect life
Of Thine eternity.
(Edwin Hatch 1878)
