Justin Appel

Dear Friends,

Today’s Old Testament lesson from the prophet Isaiah has a familiar ring. Much of the book of Job reads similarly, as God answers Job in the midst of suffering, reminding Job of His power, wisdom, and creative activity.

This same kind of language appears in the Prayer of Manasseh—Manasseh was an idolatrous king of Judah who was taken captive by the Assyrians during the couple of centuries before Christ, and whose prayer was offered in prison. One prayer book I have places this prayer in the preparatory part of an order for confession.

These passages leave us with a striking sense of who God is. He isn’t just a warm, friendly, benign sort of person who “loves us as we are.” When you read this prayer mindfully, you recognize that God is there, that He created everything that exists, that He is “the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and of their righteous seed.”

A main thrust of these passages is a stark reminder that this awe-inspiring God wants us—and Jesus reiterates the message—to repent. This is a deeply unpopular idea in our present age and cultural milieu. Our society teaches us to put ourselves at the center of all considerations, in terms of desire, of identity, of choices, and of ultimate concerns. Our faith has to work against the culture.

I recently heard a wise teacher say that Jesus’ purpose in becoming a man was to become our Savior: he became a human being for us (sinners), in order that we might repent.

The picture of repentance here is that Jesus meets us as we walk along and he asks us to “turn around and walk in the opposite direction.” That is what the Greek word for repentance (metanoia) means literally.

We are supposed to change our path of life, change our mind. Of course, such turning is hard, especially when our culture lures us toward a very wide, attractive alternative.

These references to Job and Isaiah reminds me of the creation scene in Terrence Malick’s Tree of Life. Here, breathtaking visuals overlie the Lacrimosa from Zbigniew Preisner’s Requiem for my friend, while the voice of the story’s mother character (Jessica Chastain) punctuates the music, asking God why her son had to die. This film is powerful stuff!

Yours in Christ,

—Justin