Rocky path to joy
Lily Cathcart
July 08, 2025
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Isaiah 66: 10-14 (NIVUK)
10 ‘Rejoice with Jerusalem and be glad for her,
all you who love her;
rejoice greatly with her,
all you who mourn over her.
11 For you will feed and be satisfied
at her comforting breasts;
you will drink deeply
and delight in her overflowing abundance.’12 For this is what the Lord says:
‘I will extend peace to her like a river,
and the wealth of nations like a flooding stream;
you will feed and be carried on her arm
and dandled on her knees.
13 As a mother comforts her child,
so will I comfort you;
and you will be comforted over Jerusalem.’14 When you see this, your heart will rejoice
and you will flourish like grass;
the hand of the Lord will be made known to his servants,
but his fury will be shown to his foes.
This week so far I have talked about anger and sulking, about flowers springing from ash and wreckage. Today I want to acknowledge with you, and with help from this passage from Isaiah, that the path to flowering is not easy. Humans are designed, like all creatures, to flourish best in safe places, with reliable rhythms and resources. Sometimes our own lives and the society in which we live make it feel like none of these things are possible.
It isn’t surprising then that we find ourselves full of anger, struggling, mourning as Isaiah 10 says. While I can make light of our human nature and choice to sulk I do not make light of the need for care and comforting that all humans have within us. God is not here to take away our human nature or our choices and the choices of the society we have built, but God is here to love us and be with us as we grow through it, despite it and because of it.
As a flower grows steadily through rock and soot and ruin we too must try our best to grow through our anger and emotions, our situations and society to find the place we can flower on the other side. It will not be easy, there will be rocks in our way, but Jesus knows what it is to struggle and cry out, the Spirit knows the words we cannot voice, and God is all around us waiting with an open door and arms outstretched.
Prayer:
Dear God of all the flowers
Some of us need you very much right now
Some of us are scared and hurt and angry
Please help us all to find a way to flower
Please be with every person everywhere who needs your arms and love today.
Amen
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