Reflection: Messages from God: prophecy

Every prophet is at least a bit poet, maybe actor too. Sensitive, imaginative and inspired, they literally bubble over with messages from God.* Those messages, as Brian Zahnd has imaginatively put it, transport us on a poetic magic carpet. And where that carpet takes God’s people is…hope.

It takes any and every means to help imagine the unimaginable. Always has. Ancient worship incorporated poetry and metaphor in dance, drama and song. No surprise that prophets, too, applied all the senses in their passionate tirades of warning and hope (like choir mistress Miriam leading a musical procession, Isaiah naked and barefoot for three years, Hosea marrying a prostitute, Jeremiah smashing jars, Ezekiel baking bread over human excrement).

Historically the Jews could hardly imagine the hope of rescue from their enemies, reinstated covenant with God, and worthy worship. We can hardly conceive of the future either. It takes imagination to hope for a New Kingdom. And that’s why Jesus too, in his prophetic role, uses metaphor. Imagine the Kingdom of God like a mustard seed, yeast, a hidden treasure, a net, a king, a landowner.

Prayer:

God of hope, impassion your world-wide church with images of your Kingdom on the move here in our broken world…and into eternity. Reignite our corporate hope. And individually, fill us with joy and peace as we trust in you, so, by the power of your Spirit we might spill over with hope (Romans 15:13).

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* ‘to bubble up’ is the meaning of the word nabi, for ‘prophet’.  Two other Hebrew words for ‘prophet’ translate as: ‘possessed with divine insight’, and ‘envisioning divine secrets (literally a see-er)’.

Keep in mind: “The best way to learn a complex idea is to find it living inside something else you already understand.” (Seth Godin)