Deathly and deadening silence

Isaiah 16:9b – 10 The joyful shouting at harvest is gone. Instead of song and celebration, dead silence. No more boisterous laughter in the orchards, no more hearty work songs in the vineyards. Instead of the bustle and sound of good work in the fields, silence—deathly and deadening silence.

This is god’s judgment on Moab, once arrogant, self-important, insufferable. These are hard passages to read. My heart hurts to think of all the people gone, the laughter silenced and replaced by mourning. I think of the many places in the world where such wholesale slaughter goes on, where people are suffering such terrible losses – due to tsunamis, earthquakes and floods, but also due to human conflict, violence and ethnic “cleansing”. It’s hard to even begin to take in all the human suffering this represents, the particular families and individuals who mourn the loss of family members and friends, of home and country, of health and physical wholeness.

There’s also, though, another, more prophetic word that speaks to me here: this is the fate of all empires, eventually to decline, their place taken by whoever arises next. Pride and arrogance can lead societies, just as it can individuals, into unsustainable relationships with both other cultures and the environment, as Jared Diamond so carefully documents in Collapse. It can take us out over our heads, past the point of no return – too far, as in the commercial about an SUV which can go “anywhere”, till it’s on a raft headed for a waterfall. Will we heed the call to mend our ways, to address the circumstances that threaten us – the growing gap worldwide between rich and poor, our unsustainable exploitation of the environment and natural resources, and the violence which erupts in so many parts of the globe, displacing and destroying whole communities? Or will we remain silent in the face of suffering, as did the false prophets of old?

Prayer: Dear God, It is overwhelming to contemplate the suffering in the world, and to wonder what I, one individual, can do about it. Give me the courage and the vision Mother Theresa talks about when she admonishes us to act anyway, even if our actions cannot change what we see, to love anyway, even if our love cannot be enough. Help me step out in faith, as Abraham did when he left his home to wander, with no vision of his future but God’s word. Amen.