"Strange Days Indeed"

Micah 3:9-4:4
Revelation 8:1-13
Luke 10:17-24
In his song “Nobody Told Me,” John Lennon speaks in quirky images about life and all it’s perplexities, referring at one point to “Strange days indeed…most peculiar, Mama.” It’s typical stuff from the former Beatle. Lennon’s words are apt today in light of our three readings. For example, Micah warns his readers that “…Zion shall be plowed as a field; Jerusalem shall become a heap of ruins, and the mountain of the house a wooded height” (Micah 3:12). Revelation lists a number of calamities that will strike the earth affecting about one-third of all creation (Revelation 8:7ff). In Luke, Jesus discusses the authority he will give his disciples, “to tread on snakes and scorpions; and over all the power of the enemy” (Luke 10: 19).

But by far the most wondrous vision comes again from Micah where a new day of peace and prosperity will dawn for God’s people, so great that it will attract the nations and lead them to accept Jesus authority. It lies sometime in the future—“In days to come,” says Micah (Micah 4:1). But it will happen, “for the mouth of the Lord of hosts has spoken “ (4:4). Why the tension between the dire warnings of Revelation, Luke, and the earlier portions of Micah and the promise of peace later in the Micah passage? Probably because both carry a great deal of truth. God’s grace begins with God’s judgment. It always has. Early in the book of Genesis God warns Adam and Eve that to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is to die (Genesis 2:17). When they eat it there are severe consequences, but they do not die. Later in Genesis God repents of creating humanity because of the evil that men and women do. God uses the waters of a mighty flood to “blot out” all people. “But Noah found favor in the sight of the Lord” (6:5-8). And on it goes. In sovereignty God holds us accountable for our sins, but in mercy God continues to love and care for us. “In days to come…they shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees…” (Micah 4:1, 4). It is by this tension that we know we matter to God, that what we do has meaning to God, that God is keenly interested in what we are about. Calamities may rise and fall, God’s people may struggle against nature and evil, but throughout—and especially in the end––God’s will is done and the earth becomes what it was intended to be.

Prayer: Lord, we live in strange times full of mystery and uncertainty. By your grace us to find our way through all the while praising your holy name. Amen.