Formula For A Satisfied Soul

There is an amazing promise found in the writings of Isaiah: “If thou draw out thy soul to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul; then shall thy light rise in obscurity, and thy darkness be as the noonday: And the Lord shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones: and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not” (Isaiah 58:10-11).

Most words here are translated very well, but the meaning is a little clearer when you know that in the first verse the word darkness could have been translated gloominess. What this says to me is that when we reach out to help and assist the poor and the afflicted, the Lord will heal our poverty and afflictions. But the most important promise is that when we help others, the Lord will guide us at all times and feed our hungry souls even in times of dire distress so that we won't be gloomy. His Living Waters will flow to us continually.

These verses are encouraging to me because they are doable. All of us have the capacity to reach out to others. We can give a smile, a note of appreciation, a hug, a meal, or whatever we have because we all have something to give. And in return for giving what we have, the Lord gives us more. He will “guide thee continually.” What a great blessing!

Isaiah is Good News!

Today in my Book of Mormon classes we started into the Isaiah chapters (1 Nephi 20 & 21). I always get so excited when we come to Isaiah because his writings are so rich and vibrant. Don’t get me wrong, all scripture is rich and vibrant, but Isaiah does it best which is why I think more prophets quote him than any other Biblical writer. Even Jesus quoted Isaiah more than He quoted any of the other prophets.

Isaiah speaks poetically which keeps me intrigued with the sounds and rhythm of his words. They are like music. He also teaches in what to me seems almost like code, so that every time I read him something new is decoded. This happens because the metaphors he uses take on new depth as my life gives me more experiences to use to decipher the code.

You can’t read Isaiah fast. You have to read him slowly and ponder every phrase until it sinks deep into your heart and from there seeps down into the marrow of your bones. Once in the marrow, the teachings of Isaiah are strength and vim and vigor. In short, Isaiah is amazing!

More Words of Isaiah

My students often complain that Isaiah is too difficult to read. I agree that certain passages are difficult. I don’t understand it all, but there are so many wonderful things hidden away in Isaiah that it is worth plowing through it to find them. For example, In Isaiah 41:10 it says, “Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.”

The right hand is the covenant hand and so the Lord is telling us that when we are keeping the covenants He sustains us. The covenants we make with Him are binding and powerful! Because of those covenants, we don’t need to fear. We don’t need to get discouraged. We have a covenant with God, and therefore He is with us and will take care of us.

Finding passages such as these help us understand what the Lord meant when he said, “Search these things. Yea, a commandment I give unto you that ye search these things diligently; for great are the words of Isaiah” (3 Nephi 23:1).

Prognostications

In Isaiah 8:19-22 there are some difficult passages to understand. Part of the problem is the King James translation which is very unclear and confusing in these verses. However, when we go to other translations of the original Hebrew texts, these passages become not only clear but extremely instructive for our times.

The gist of what Isaiah is saying in these verses is that it is useless for people to turn to mediums, astrology, or anything but God to get answers about life and what to do. One shouldn’t inquire of the dead to know what to do for the living. When people accept and speak words from any of these other sources they will have words with no light, and thus they will roam about hungry. (I assume this means spiritually hungry.) And in this state of hunger they become angry and they blame God for their problems. And as they look around everything will be depressing and full of anguish and gloom.

We live in tough times. The economy is failing. Sin abounds. Adversity hits us from every side. In our day most of us aren’t tempted to turn to mediums and astrologers for answers, but we are tempted to listen to worldly prognostications spouted by the stock market experts, newscasters, politicians, and academics. We hear them on television and read them in the newspapers. But as Isaiah taught, instead of listening to them, we should be listening to the Lord. The worldly forecasts give us advice as they guess at the future, but it is never comforting. We go away from them hungry and upset and sometimes even doubting or blaming God.

The Lord, on the other hand, will guide us as to what we should do and feed us at the same time. When fed and full of His comfort and love, we can see the problems around us and know what to do. But even more, we can live without feeling anguish, despair or gloom. We can be at peace knowing the Lord is with us and will guide us through the problems we face.

Jehovah is my Song!

At one point in his writings, Isaiah proclaims that Jehovah is his strength and his song. Jehovah being my strength, I understand. How Jehovah is my song isn’t as clear. In the Psalms we find the declaration “with my song will I praise him” (Psalm 28:7). This makes more sense to me. After all, music is a powerful way to praise God. And maybe that is similar to what Isaiah means when he says, “Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and not be afraid; for the Lord Jehovah is my strength and my song; he also has become my salvation” (Isaiah 12:2 and 2 Ne 22:2). The Hebrew word translated here as song, is zimrath, and means “song of praise.” So maybe Isaiah means that Jehovah is what he sings about and praises.

But he says Jehovah is his song so maybe there is more to this declaration that he wants us to understand. A song is a type of music and music is “the art of ordering tones or sounds in succession, in combination, and in temporal relationships to produce a composition having unity and continuity.”

This takes a little thought, so ponder on it for a moment. If we let Jehovah order our lives, he orders the experiences in succession, in combination, and in relationship to each other to produce a life having unity and continuity. So our life becomes a song and Jehovah is the composer. Sometimes life is like modern music—full of polyphonic, dissonant and syncopated events. But when we trust in the composer, he always brings it back to harmony, melody and rhythm. And the promise is that it will eventually end in harmony, melody and rhythm and stay there forever.

But still, Jehovah in this analogy is the composer, not the song. There has to be one more step in the process. Jehovah is our song when he becomes our life. When we stop trying to order the events of our life and let him do it, he produces a composition having unity and continuity and He is that song.

Pulling Carts of Sin

If you've been reading this blog long, you know that I love the visual images presented in the scriptures. One of my favorite pictures is painted by Isaiah in Isaiah 5:18 (also 2 Ne 15:18). The image is of us pulling on a rope attached to a heavy cart. As Isaiah puts it: "Wo unto them that draw iniquity with cords of vanity, and sin as it were with a cart rope." At first when I'd see this picture in my head it filled me with sadness. It sometimes still does, but more often now it makes me chuckle.

Think about it. Isaiah is telling us that sin and vanity are like ropes that bind us to a heavy, heavy load. The load we drag around with us, the load that weighs us down, consists of such things as depression, discouragement, guilt, pride, self-doubt, grudges, and any of the other negative feelings caused by sin. Once you get the picture in your head of a weary, feeble, sad person, the rope of sin over his shoulder digging more painfully into the muscle with every step as he drags the enormous load everywhere he goes, you see that every step gets harder and more painful. But all he needs to do to stop hurting and make his journey easier is to let go of the rope! It is so simple. How easy the journey would be without the heavy cart. And the irony? That's what makes me chuckle. No one needs to pull such a cart. Lugging the cart is self-inflicted pain. So why do we drag heavy loads around? Many reasons, but most of them boil down to pride. We can't admit we're wrong. We can't admit that all this junk we've been hauling behind us wasn't necessary. We're too embarrassed to admit our mistakes and repent. We are stuck in our old ways and too proud to learn something new.

But without the cart, we have the energy and the ability to skip—no make that dance—the path of life. Without the heavy cart obstacles in the road are a nuisance, but not insurmountable. Without the cart, the journey of life is a joy, not a burden. So let go.

Let us leave the cart with all its burdens behind, and let God take our blistered hands and help us along the path. He will, if we will let go of the rope and put our weary hands in His healing hands.

Photo from Getty Images by AFP/Getty Images

Great Are the Words of Isaiah

I love Isaiah. He speaks to something deep within me that reaches into every fiber of my being. One reason I learn so much from him is that he speaks in metaphors and symbols that sink deep into my heart and then open and expand like a dry sponge submerged in water. What I mean by that is that initially I learn something wonderful from his writings, but as I ponder what I have learned it unfolds more meaning and continues to teach me.

One of those passages that has “fueled” my life is Isaiah 49:15-16. It is a passage I heard often growing up and liked. It goes like this, “Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? Yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee. Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands; thy walls are continually before me.”

I remember discussing this verse in a classroom setting when I was younger and the teacher explaining that this first verse had reference to a woman’s motherly instincts. He explained that mother’s have strong natural feelings for their children and that often they give their own lives to protect a child. He then compared those motherly instincts to the love the Lord has for us. While I liked the passage, I remember thinking that not all mothers have those feelings and wondered how that could be explained. There are numerous reports of women who have babies and abandon them or even worse they kill their own infants.

A few years later, I had my first child and became a nursing mother. On the first night that she slept through the night, I awakened shortly after what had been her feeding time with horrible pain throbbing through me. As I tossed and turned waiting for her to wake and relieve the pressure, I thought of Isaiah’s words and realized how inadequate my instructor’s explanation had been. He had never nursed a child and didn’t know that the key word in the verse is “sucking.” Isaiah spoke of a nursing child, and it is absolutely impossible for a nursing mother to forget her child. The pain is too intense. It can’t happen. And yet the Lord says, “Maybe a nursing mother could forget, but I can’t.” And then He goes on to reference the Atonement as he explains that He has graven us in His hands.

Think about the many times in a day you look at your hands. (Better still make a small circle on each of your hands and for just one day every time you glance at that circle think about the Atonement.) That is what the Savior is telling us. He can’t forget us because we are constantly before Him. Not only that, our “walls” or the obstacles we daily face are also constantly before Him. It is not that He won’t forget us. He can’t.

When I am tempted to think I am just an insignificant drop in the sea of humanity and that God couldn’t possibly be thinking about me, I recite Isaiah 49:15-16 and remember that I am graven in His hands. He knows me.