"For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven
and do not return there until they have watered the earth,
making it bring forth and sprout,
giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,
so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;
it shall not return to me empty,
but it shall accomplish that which I purpose
and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.
For you shall go out in joy
and be led back in peace;
the mountains and the hills before you
shall burst into song,
and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.
Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress;
instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle,
and it shall be to the LORD for a memorial,
for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off." (Isaiah 55:10-13)
The bottom line here, I guess, is that God is going to get done what God intends to get done--even if God's way of doing things seems inefficient or indirect to our eyes.
These words that come from the latter chapters of what we call the book of Isaiah may still be ringing in your ears from hearing them this past Sunday in worship. They seem to be speaking to people who are waiting on God to act, or for God's promises to come true. Quite possibly, the prophet is speaking to people who have been nervously biding their time in exile, shifting uncomfortably in their seats and waiting for their long-hoped-for homecoming. They had grown up on stories of God's glorious acts of deliverance--the parting of the Sea, the provision in the wilderness, and the tales of God's wonder-working power. And they had heard more recently from prophets like Isaiah that this same God would do it all again and bring them home from exile--not through the Sea as in the Exodus out of Egypt, but with a road in the wilderness that would guide the people who had been born away from home in Babylon back to the land of their ancestors. So, after hearing all that great talk about God's powerful word and God's reliable promises, you can imagine them becoming a bit impatient as they waited for all these great things to happen.
You can imagine the questions forming on their lips, or at least on their minds: "How do we know God can follow through on all this big talk?" "Can we rely on God's promise, especially when the Babylonian Empire seems so strong and unwilling to let us go home?" "If God has said that we will come home, then why are we still here under foreign occupation?" All fair questions, even if they are pretty pointed. If someone is suffering, after all, it's not terribly comforting if the only thing anybody ever says is, "Don't think about it, and just hold tight." So what is God supposed to say during the remainder of the waiting time until the people can go back home? What will God do to assure them that the promises will be kept, and that they are worth holding onto in the mean time?
Here is how the 55th chapter of Isaiah puts it: "Just like the rain and snow come down and don't go back up to the clouds again until they have made their way through the whole water cycle, watering the crops so that humans can eat and thrive, flowing to the river and then the ocean, and then evaporating back up into the sky again, my word will accomplish what I intend for it to do." It's a powerful image, at one level simply assuring the prophet's listeners that God has not forgotten about them and God's word will still be effective. After all, people could picture exactly what the prophet was describing: even in a pre-scientific age, people could see the flow of water from the rainfall to their fields and back up to the sky to repeat the cycle all over again. If the rains could be trusted to flow out into the world and fulfill their purpose of helping plants to grow (and thereby to help humans to grow), then in a similar way, God's word could be counted on as well. So far, so good, in terms of speaking words of assurance to nervous hearts. The prophet was basically saying, "What God wants to get God, God is going to get done--mark my words."
But there's another layer to the image that I think is really helpful to keep in mind. The path of the water cycle might seem like a pretty circuitous and roundabout route to get from the starting point to the destination, but that's not a failure or a flaw on God's part. It is actually by design. You might look at the meandering path that a droplet of water takes, from rainfall to landing on a leaf or into the soil, to the river, to the sea or lake, and then to evaporate back up into the sky, and think that seems like a waste of energy or lack of direction--but it is accomplishing a number of things all along the way. It is exactly because the rain takes its sweet old time being soaked up by plants, or flowing into groundwater, or entering the river, or returning to the sea, that life can thrive on this planet. It is precisely because the snow doesn't directly empty into the ocean that plants can grow, animals can feed, and human beings can flourish. The prophet here in Isaiah 55 is well aware of that, pointing out that the rain's winding path is what allows it to "water the earth" and "making it bring forth and sprout" so that there can be both "seed to the sower and bread to the eater." In other words, God seems to have deliberately chosen what looks like an indirect or inefficient way of doing things--which surely takes longer than a direct Point-A-to-Point-B straight line would--in order to make life thrive.
And that seems to be part of the point here: not only can we count on God to get done what God wants done, but it turns out that what God wants done is for the world to flourish. It may happen in surprising ways that take a long time to unfold, but this is how God's purpose works, much as rainwater wends its way with twists and turns on its journey from the clouds to the fields to the rivers. The very thing that makes it take a long time to reach the destination is also what makes it life-giving at every point along the way. So it makes perfect sense, then, that the prophet then imagines "the trees of the field shall clap their hands" and the ground bringing up myrtle and cypress instead of briers and thorns.
For the people living in exile and waiting for God's big dramatic shows of power, then, all of this might have been a way of saying, "I need you to trust me: God is still going to get done what God wants to get done. But it might be that there is more flourishing that can happen if God does it in the longer-term, seemingly indirect way that looks more like the water cycle than a non-stop flight as the crow flies." It might still be hard to wait and hope that God was working in the world, but at least it pointed to the possibility that what seemed like a design-flaw might actually be a purposeful strategy. God's ways might take a long time to come to fruition, not because God isn't proficient at getting things done, but because God's strategy is always bigger, wider, and more life-giving than we realized. God isn't just interested in transporting water from the sky to sea-level; God is interested in bringing forth life all along the way. For that to happen, you need stops in the farmer's field and the growing wheat, rather than a single straight line. Maybe God actually knows what God is doing, the prophet seems to be saying, but we have to see our own situations within the larger context of all the ways God is seeking to bring life in the world.
Sometimes our own anxieties make us see the world with the same narrow focus and short-sightedness. We can only see our own personal problems or difficulties, and we pray and pray for God's intervention, only to feel let down and disappointed when God's answers don't materialize on our terms or timelines. I wonder if the same prophet who spoke here in these ancient words might remind us as well that God indeed is going to get God what God wants to get done... and at the same time, that God's way of doing things may look indirect or inefficient, but are part of a bigger and more beautiful design intended to bring the world more fully to life. That doesn't mean our worries or needs are unimportant, but it does mean that our stories are part of something even larger and grander than we may have realized--and that God intends to enable all of it to flourish.
Like Julian of Norwich said it so long ago in her own meandering and beautifully inefficient way of putting it, "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be made well." The rain falls from the sky to the field to the stream to the sea, and life breaks out everywhere along the way. That's how God operates in the world. Thank God.
Lord God, accomplish your good purposes among us, in us, and through us. And enable us to trust in the midst of it all that you are at work.
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