B90Days: Tired

It’s been a very long week in adjunctmom land. Yes, I know it’s Monday, but it’s been a week since my last check in on this project and during the course of that week, I wrapped up a term; started a new term; worked on getting a new mentee up to speed (I mentor new faculty as part of my job); had a house guest for the weekend; went to a sewing/quilting expo; and, tried to keep up with my Bible reading.

The amazing news, to me, is that I am current. I am reading day 52 today, so that means I’m precisely where I’m supposed to be. It’s been rough going as I knew Isaiah would be. This is such a hard book of the Bible and I know I’m not the only one who feels that way based on Amy’s warnings at the end of the chat last week.

Compared to the books that precede it, Isaiah feels arid and oppressive and dark, but it also gives us the vision of the future. It shows us that faithfulness in the face of great trauma and pain will be rewarded, but it takes patience.

I think that’s what I most connect with in this week’s reading: the feeling that great patience is required of people of God. If you’re following him, life won’t suddenly be full of sunshine, rainbows, and candy sprinkles. There will be dark days. There will be hard days. We have to be prepared for those and trust in our faith rather than assume that this is in some way God’s assessment and judgment that we’re experiencing. In some ways Isaiah wraps back around to Job. Instead of testing a single person, a whole tribe is tested and warned of the coming darkness and given the tools needed to survive.

I was also interested that Isaiah is the source of the “your ways are not My ways” and “only the good die young” ideas. It’s interesting how much of our culture, at large, derives from this one book even when we don’t realize it. Weird.

At least, that’s how I read it. You can find out other perspectives by going over to Mom’s Toolbox and checking out the other guys and gals talking about this.