ISAIAH  45:C6-7

 
 
The title of my homily for today - Wednesday in the 3rd Week of Advent -  is, “Isaiah 45:C6 - 7.”
 
It’s part of the beginning of today’s first reading.
 
Let me say the words again.
 
“I am the Lord and there is no other.
I form the light and create the darkness.
I make well-being and create woe.
I the Lord, do all these things.”
 
The word that jumped out was "woe." I checked out several translations and notice these words are used:  evil – or calamity or misery.
 
The question that hit me was, “Is Isaiah saying God creates evil?”
 
My Hebrew to English Bible translates it this way, “I make weal” [yes WEAL – I never used that word "weal" – “and I create woe.”
 
Weal and woe.
 
Good and evil.
 
In Hebrew the words used in Isaiah 45: 7 for weal and woe are shalom and ra. We are familiar with SALOWM – peace – meaning things are going right - but we probably don't know RA.  It means things are going wrong. There’s calamity.
 
Well-being and calamity.
 
That’s life – sometimes it rains joy and happiness and sometimes it rains mess and woe.
 
Isaiah 45 has the people living in misery – in the Babylonian exile – and Isaiah is giving them hope – and Cyrus is going to get us back home.
 
That’s everyone’s life:  good times and bad times, light and darkness, sickness and health, till death do us part.
 
DOLLY PARTON
 
I was watching a documentary on Dolly Parton  yesterday and in one interview she said she went through a tough time there once – for a good 4 months. She had women’s health problems and some depression and darkness problems and put on some weight and got some help in a New York Hospital.
 
She said you can hear some of my thoughts and feelings in some of my earlier songs. She said, “I was going through what everyone goes through. It’s life.”
 
She said she had some serious conversations with God and she told God she wanted some serious answers.
 
She pulled through.
 
She was saying what Isaiah was saying here in today’s readings.
 
YOU
 
In your serious conversations with God – what answers have you come up about the question about the tough stuff of life – the WOE -stuff.
 
Do you think God zaps people?
 
Do you think life is a combination of weal and woe, good and evil, sweet and the sour, joys and sorrows?
 
I don’t think God says, “I’m going to get you with a nasty flu or virus or cancer.”  But I do think life calls us into a conversation and a communion and cross sharings with God – with Christ – in our time of life.”
 
I do think the things that happened to people in the gospel can happen to us when we have faith – we see better, we hear better, we walk better – as we hear in today’s gospel.
 
CONCLUSION
 
One short story….. FISH STOR