What Does God Do with Power?
A New Commentary on Isaiah 11:1-10
Put not your trust in rulers, nor in any child of the earth, for there is no help in them. When they breathe their last, they return to earth, and in that day their thoughts perish.”
-Psalm 146:3-4
There was no one waiting for me at the airport. After graduating from seminary, Cheryl and I flew from Los Angeles to Maputo, Mozambique. We disembarked from the plane, collected our bags, and went through customs. The sliding door opened, revealing a welcoming committee from World Vision, the company my wife would work with in this southern African country. I looked for representatives from my company but they were nowhere to be seen.
World Vision Mozambique transported us to their guest house with encouraging fanfare. But they had heard nothing from the Igreja Presbiteriana do Mocambique (IPM). The next day I began researching the location of the headquarters of my workplace. It wasn’t as easy as I had thought. After years of war, the government and the rebels had signed a peace treaty and were a few weeks away from fresh democratic elections. So the only phone book was years out of date. Not only this, but most of the street signs had been destroyed so Renamo, the rebel group, would have difficulty finding their way in the capital city if they managed to reach that far. I walked through the city and asked around but found no one who knew where I could find the offices of the president of the IPM. Days later my frustration and distress grew into full-blown sickness and landed me in bed in the World Vision guest house, no closer to any communication with the church meant to ordain me into ministry in that country.
I shouldn’t have been surprised. There is a well-known story in the Bible where the main characters find themselves out of control. Mary found herself pregnant without any choice in the matter. She and her fiance Joseph found themselves in Bethlehem without a hotel reservation, giving birth to their firstborn son in some kind of manger. Inconsistent fulfillment of human expectations seems to be the consistent theme for people on a journey with Jesus. Actually experiencing this in a critical moment of my own life took things to a different level. It also gave me deeper insight into the plight of the people of Israel in Isaiah.
In our last post on Isaiah chapter 7, Israel was out of control. Defeat looked certain as Israel was surrounded by more powerful kingdoms. God promised King Ahaz that Israel wouldn’t be defeated. He even told Ahaz to choose any sign he liked to prove his trustworthiness but Ahaz wouldn’t do it.
It dawned on me that in my distrust of power, I, like Ahaz, had narrowed my trust to what I can see, what I can prove, what I can believe. Effectively, I only trust in myself. But then I do something strange. When I can’t see, prove, or trust in a situation, I don’t doubt myself, I doubt God. I went to Mozambique as a step of faith. I trusted in my decision to go there with the Presbyterian Church. When I couldn’t find proof that the Presbyterian church was working on my behalf, I began to distrust God, just as Ahaz had done in Isaiah.
God provided the sign to King Ahaz anyway:
Then Isaiah said, ‘Hear now, you house of David! Is it not enough to try the patience of humans? Will you try the patience of my God also? Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: the virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel. -Isaiah 7:13-14
By chapter 11 the threat to Israel was gone. But Israel had been stripped of her power as well. So now what would God do with the humbled Israelites?
“A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.” -Isaiah 11:1
God was continuing to work behind the scenes. Using the metaphor of a tree cut back to its stump, Isaiah tells us that God was preparing a fresh and powerful root within Israel (Jesse was King David’s father) that would grow and prosper. God’s people just couldn’t see it.
I couldn’t see what God was doing either. A few weeks after our arrival in Mozambique, as my wife was working hard in her HR position with World Vision, I was out of bed but unordained, unemployed and walking down Kim Il Sung Avenue in downtown Maputo. A beige Nissan Patrol drove past, turned up the curb and onto the sidewalk in front of me. The back door flew open and a short, rotund, and very excited man stepped out saying, “Rrrandy Lovehoy, I am Amos Zhita!”
At the time I did not know who Reverend Zhita was. I would soon learn that he was the President of the Presbyterian Church; the every person I had been searching for. He had just returned from a trip to the Presbyterian General Assembly in the United States and had hammered out all of the details for my ordination by the IPM on behalf of the Presbyterian Church (USA) in a town called Xai Xai . He had also set up my ministry with Rev. Nhlongo in congregations around Maputo. God had been at work, under my radar, all of this time.
If I had trusted God I could have spent my first two weeks enjoying Mozambique while touring the southern half of the country. I had been too worried and afraid to even think of such a thing.
God can be trusted with power.