Glory be to Jesus Christ!
Any teacher will tell you that the most difficult student to teach isn’t the one who doesn’t know anything, but the one who thinks he already knows everything. You might have an important message to transmit but he’s heard it. He knows it. Until he accepts that he is a student and you the teacher you will never get through. This is the problem with pride brothers and sisters. What do we have which was not given to us? Even when we cultivate our gifts, they still remain that, gifts which the Lord has endowed us with.
It’s incredible to see Isaiah’s trust here. Assyria is the occupying nation, the ones oppressing his people. And yet he ascribes Assyria’s victory to the Lord’s will and is upset that Assyria’s king finds his affluence in himself and not in the Lord’s blessing. What a tremendous lesson in the difference between pride and humility.
Throughout all his sufferings, Job, when pushed hard enough reminds his friends that all his blessings were just those, blessings. His health, home and family had been taken from him and he responded with “naked I have come into this world and naked I shall depart.” Our Lenten journey is designed to “strip us down” of the idols which we lean on so that we can be aware of our nakedness before the Lord. This is the only way we can say with Isaiah: “In that day the remnant of Israel and the survivors of the house of Jacob will no more lean on him who struck them, but will lean on the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, in truth.”
Glory be to Jesus Christ!
