Isaiah 42: 1-9
For this week's Bible study, I am choosing just one of the four questions on which to reflect. Please feel free to choose one of the others that are listed in the guide (p. 74-75, and share your thoughts on that one, if you like. I just found myself so drawn to the first one; it made sense for me to focus on that.
1) The words of Isaiah 42 promise a servant will bring justice. Where do you long to see justice in your life? What would justice look like? Where do we need to see justice in the world? How would a just world be different from the world as it is today?
Justice seems like such a lofty ideal or goal for me that I find it difficult to apply to my own personal life. But, when I ponder the places of injustice and justice in my life there are two things that come to mind. The first is my mother's battle with plasma cell cancer (multiple myeloma). Her battle was ferocious and long. She fought for 5 years, doing every treatment she could, taking every chemotherapy she could, even undergoing two stem cell transplants. Honestly, she had moments of remission, but they were few and far between during her battle. Most of the time, it was brutal, and she suffered. I wish that I could share a different story of a battle with cancer that offered respite and encouragement along the way. But that wasn't our experience; it just wasn't. It was an ugly battle, albeit fought bravely, but a battle that can certainly be described as unjust. I long to see justice for cancer patients, their caregivers, their families, friends and communities. (It's one of the reasons why I participate strongly each year in the American Cancer Society's Relay for Life.)
There was no reason or logic or explanation to my mom's cancer. Multiple myeloma affects mostly folks who are exposed to toxins in the workplace or certain pollutants in our environment. It truly pains me to think about that our (humanity's) lack of care and concern for our environment is a contributing factor to the injustice of diseases like my mom's cancer, and to the injustice to God's great creation.
I guess some form of justice would look like a world where we all were working hard together to protecting and caring for our ecological systems, reducing the pain and damage to our environment and reducing contributing factors of disease. Some form of justice would be finding a cure for cancer, (all forms), and would be knowing that less folks had to suffer the ravages of that disease.
The second place that I see injustice is sexism in my own lift, and in our culture. I see it around the world where women are not considered as fully contributing, beloved and loving children of God. I long to see justice fulfilled where women are encouraged to become who God intends them to become (not who society and societal norms dictate), where women are encouraged to learn, grow, develop and are nurtured to do and become as God intends -- contributing parts of the whole of God's world.
I truly believe that a more just or just (!) world would be a place of significantly less violence, less sorrow, less grieving, less death. I see so often how our world perpetuates injustice through retaliation. I see and learn and experience injustice causing injustice. Injustice being the driving force that causes someone to act out violently, injuring others, causing extreme pain.
These are just some thoughts to the first question in the Week 2 study. All of the questions in the study are so good! What do you think? Feel free to respond to what I wrote, to answer the question yourself, or to answer a different question for the week's study (p. 74-75)
~ Pastor Melinda
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