All You Can See or Imagine

"Summer Night", AkagenoSaru

All You Can See or Imagine

Who has scooped up the ocean

in his two hands,

or measured the sky between his thumb and little finger,

who has put all the earth's dirt in one of his baskets,

weighed each mountain and hill?

Who could ever have told God what to do

or taught him his business?

What expert would he have gone to for advice,

what school would he attend to learn justice?

...

"So - who is like me?

Who holds a candle to me?" says The Holy.

Look at the night skies:

Who do you think made all this?

Who marches this army of stars out each night,

counts them off, calls each by name,

- so magnificent! so powerful! - 

and never overlooks a single one!

Why would you ever complain, O Jacob,

or whine, Israel, saying,

"God has lost track of me,

He doesn't care what happens to me'?

Don't you know anything? Haven't you been listening?

God doesn't come and go. God lasts.

He doesn't get tired out, doesn't pause to catch his breath.

And he knows everything, inside and out.

He energizes those who get tired,

gives fresh strength to dropouts.

For even young people tire and drop out,

young folk in their prime stumble and fall.

But those who wait upon God get fresh strength.

They spread their wings and soar like eagles,

They run and don't get tired,

they walk and don't lag behind.

Isaiah 40:12-14, 25-31

fr. The Message

Some prefer the more poetic King James version of the Bible (I think, when it comes down to it, I do too). But there is something interesting about the way Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase of the Bible brings a new slant to the old familiar words. I like to read both, or several versions, just to compare the tone and feeling each conveys. This passage is a wonderful example of a “wake-me-up”. Something to take up after a sleepless night in which your worries have grown to enormous scope and paralyzing power, where the guilty corners of conscience are full of ugly and unshakable recollections, where the fear that there are nothing but odds against and nothing to even us, to balance, to restore or right us, and then, the morning – my gosh, have you ever felt that inexplicable loneliness of simply being alive? Well that’s when I take up the wake-up poetry, the break-up-this-narrowing-mental-corridor-going-nowhere poetry; and listen to me on this, there is no better place to find this but in the Bible. It’s like a hand upraised, a voice that says, “Peace. Be still.” And it stops. It all stops. The noise in my head, the tightness of my chest, the snowballing thoughts. It’s like being off-kilter, out of joint, askew, and having someone take me by the shoulders and set me right in place. My place. Where I fit, where I belong.

“Who is like me?”

Oh yeah. There it is. That’s right. My God, my God, my heavenly father – he knows. He has not forgotten. He has not been sleeping or looking the other way. He is working, he has never paused, hesitated, or faltered. He has not changed his mind about loving me. I can shake off this weight. I can stand up straight. I can go on.

The King James version gets the spirit of the last verse best -

“They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength;

they shall mount up with wings like eagles;

they shall run and not grow weary;

and they shall walk, and not faint.”