From today’s reading...
As a pregnant woman near her time of delivery writhes and cries out in her pangs, so have we been, Yahweh, in your eyes: we have been pregnant, we have writhed, but we have given birth only to wind: we have not given salvation to the earth, no inhabitants for the world have been brought to birth.” Isaiah 26:17-18
In studies of the torture the Jews endured in the concentration camps during WWII, it was noted how cruel the Nazi guards were in their “targeting certain categories of prisoners to be ‘annihilated through work.’ Such prisoners were literally worked to death; that is, put to work under conditions that would directly and deliberately lead to illness, injury, and death. For example, at the Mauthausen concentration camp, the SS forced prisoners to run up the 186 steps out of the stone quarry carrying heavy boulders until they dropped, and then denied them the food, rest, or medicine necessary to recover.” (Holocaust Encyclopedia)
Viktor Frankl reminded us that if our why is big enough, we can endure almost any how. But the Nazis crushed the Jews under never-ending, meaningless pain and suffering.
Isaiah is referencing how cruel and disheartening that can be in his metaphor of enduring the pains of childbirth only to end up childless.
To endure the trials and tribulations of this life without the promise of God’s mercy and justice is what Isaiah was describing. Life, and the sufferings of life, only have meaning and purpose in God.
Trust the process, which is the only way to...
Stay the course.
Keep the faith.
Endure.
Now go sell something.
