Isaiah 44:22: Redeemed First, Then Called Back

I have swept away your offenses like a cloud, your sins like the morning mist. Return to me, for I have redeemed you.

Isaiah 44:22 (NIV)

Redeemed First, Then Called Back

The letter came five years ago and it is three sentences long, and one of them says the door is open. It is in the glovebox of her car, in the envelope, with the fold going soft at the crease.

She has driven to the end of that road twice. Both times she kept going, once because it was late and once for no reason she could give anybody, and both times she was home in under an hour.

Remember these things, Jacob. I have made you, you are my servant, and I will not forget you. Then God names what he has already done. Offenses gone like a cloud, sins gone like the morning mist.

Neither of those comes off by hand. Nobody walks out and wipes mist off a field. But God doesn’t say the mist lifted, which is what mist does on its own; he says he swept it. The picture is of a thing gone past recovering, and the verb under it is his.

Then God asks for the walk back. Return to me. The reason he attaches to it is work he has already finished, for I have redeemed you. The mist was gone before he called.

So nothing here gets purchased. God secured the place first and then asked for the walk, and the walk is still a walk. Israel was a long way out when God said this to them, and they had put the distance there themselves, and none of that moved the redeeming out of what God had already done.

Hearing that you’re forgiven takes a second. Getting up and covering the distance is slower work, and Isaiah gives no estimate of how long it takes anybody.

The letter is five years old and she has not gone. Nothing about that has made the letter any less true, and she knows it, which is why it stays in the car.