Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed, says the Lord, who has compassion on you.
Isaiah 54:10 (NIV)
The Mountains Are Allowed to Move
The younger brother’s dorm room empties out over two days in December, and the older one drives up for the last of it. Half the floor has already gone home. They get the mini fridge down three flights without dropping it, then stand in the lot arguing about whether the tape on the box marked KITCHEN was ever going to hold. It didn’t. He laughs at his own handwriting on the flap and says it’s gotten to look like their dad’s.
The city hearing this promise in Isaiah has already been left once. God tells her he will call her back as if she were a wife deserted and distressed in spirit, a wife who married young, only to be rejected, and he says he hid his face from her for a moment and is bringing her back with everlasting kindness.
Then he brings up the flood. He swore afterward that the waters of Noah would never again cover the earth, and he tells her this new oath is made the same way: so now I have sworn not to be angry with you, never to rebuke you again. He’s pointing at an oath that has already held for generations and saying the new one is of that make.
Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed. He concedes that much before he gets anywhere near love. Mountains are what people reach for when they want an example of permanence, and he lets them go, lets the hills go after them, and puts his covenant of peace down where the geology can’t take it along.
The things a life gets built on are easy to list: a job, a marriage, a body that works, a parent who still picks up the phone. Isaiah adds the covenant of peace to that list, and it stays when the others go.
He signs it himself. Says the Lord, who has compassion on you. An afflicted city, lashed by storms and not comforted, gets a promise that opens by agreeing with her about the mountains.
Out in the lot the brothers give up on the tape and go find somewhere to eat. Neither of them decided to write like their father, and neither of them can stop.
A Prayer to Remember
God, there are four or five things I’ve decided are permanent, and I’ve never checked whether you agree. You know the list. This week I’m asking for the use of my hands. Put me where somebody needs the heavy end of something, and I’ll bring you the list another day.
In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.
