How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace, who brings good news, who proclaims salvation, who says to Zion, “Your God reigns!”
Isaiah 52:7 (WEB)
News From Over the Mountain
The ladder comes down out of the hallway ceiling on a pull cord, and the woman going up it is up there because she can’t stand being downstairs. Under the roof the air is hot and smells like paper. She slides a box of winter coats off a box of school papers, settles onto a joist with her knees up, and reads fourth grade report cards for an hour because they’re the ones on top. The call came three weeks ago. Nothing in this house does anything about it.
Somebody is coming over the mountains toward a city that’s rubble, and the watchmen on the wall see him before the people below them do. Isaiah says the feet are beautiful. The man is bringing word of something that has already happened a long way off: peace, salvation, and God reigning over the very place where his name had been mocked all day long. The people he’s running toward were sold for nothing and are being redeemed without money, and not one of them can see over that ridge.
They found out because a man ran. The city had no way to know on its own, and the word came in on foot, after the fact, out of the mouth of whoever got there first. Most of what changes a situation reaches people like that, carried in by someone who was closer to it than they were.
She comes down the ladder backwards, folds it up into the ceiling, and washes the attic off her hands at the sink. Her phone is face up on the counter where she left it, and she checks it standing there with her hands still wet. Then she puts the kettle on and stays in the kitchen so she’ll hear it.
In Isaiah the watchmen lift up their voices and shout together for joy. When the Lord returns to Zion, they’ll see it with their own eyes.
A Prayer to Remember
Someone I love is waiting on news that hasn’t come, and I don’t have any to give her. Send it, God. Steady whoever is bringing it and get them the whole way there, and let what they say when they arrive be true. Give her something to hear before she stops listening for it.
In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.
