The Crossway BCP Lectionary is again getting flakey… I’m using the Revised Common Lectionary today, from the most reliable place, which is the PCUSA. As when I’m using the other lectionary, I’m not going to link back: the scriptures can be found anywhere.

For those who are not from NZ, I’m in Auckland with my folks, and Auckland has become… weirder. Went to a Reformed Presbyterian Church yesterday — there is precisely one of these in Auckland, (I think Grace Presbyterian has four) and it is affiliated with the “other” reformed church in Dunedin. Sermon was excellent — so much so that I pulled out my phone and took notes, using Google Docs.

And this mornings illustrations come courtesy of facebook. Yes, the coffee is kicking in… when I can code raw html I am awake enough to consider the lectionary.

Sing for joy, O heavens, and exult, O earth; break forth, O mountains, into singing!
For the LORD has comforted his people, and will have compassion on his suffering ones.
But Zion said, “The LORD has forsaken me, my Lord has forgotten me.”

Can a woman forget her nursing child, or show no compassion for the child of her womb?
Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you.
See, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands; your walls are continually before me.
Your builders outdo your destroyers, and those who laid you waste go away from you.

Lift up your eyes all around and see; they all gather, they come to you.
As I live, says the LORD, you shall put all of them on like an ornament, and like a bride you shall bind them on.

Surely your waste and your desolate places and your devastated land — surely now you will be too crowded for your inhabitants, and those who swallowed you up will be far away. The children born in the time of your bereavement will yet say in your hearing: “The place is too crowded for me; make room for me to settle.” Then you will say in your heart, “Who has borne me these? I was bereaved and barren, exiled and put away — so who has reared these? I was left all alone — where then have these come from?”

Thus says the Lord GOD:
I will soon lift up my hand to the nations, and raise my signal to the peoples;
and they shall bring your sons in their bosom, and your daughters shall be carried on their shoulders.

Kings shall be your foster fathers, and their queens your nursing mothers.
With their faces to the ground they shall bow down to you, and lick the dust of your feet.
Then you will know that I am the LORD; those who wait for me shall not be put to shame.

Isaiah 49:13-23

I am feeling a bit like yesterday’s preacher, who said that the passage (Daniel 7) is impossible to interpret with confidence. That is the nature of prophecy.

But one thing we can know. This world is fungible. The memes of this time will fade, and the nature of those we oppose will become known to all: for by their actions you will know them.

We were told that this progressive project would lead to a new Jerusalem. It would lead to salvation, to a New England. It has not. Instead of Rivendell metastasising, so that the last homely home is universal, we face but dust and ashes, as all covenants and vows are broken by our elite, and we are left with ashes and dust.

We are not even hollow: we are broken. The blasphemies of this world (and trust me, this song is blasphemous: for it suggests that human love is all that there is) are but beautiful, poisonous lies.

What can we do? Well, we can note one thing from this: if the Jews are written on the palm of the hand of the almighty, and he has not forgotten them, how much more will he not forget us.

Our society may choose to walk away: but let us and our house choose the LORD.