Lent 4A - Isaiah 42:14-21 - by Don Neuendorf
A sense of extreme frustration seems to permeate these verses. The chapter begins with a joyful tone. The Lord's servant is coming and he will establish justice. It continues with God's promise to open the eyes of the blind and free the captives. It goes on with, "sing to the Lord..."
But then, the prophet reflects God's anxiety (for lack of a better word, this is, after all, an anthropomorphism). He reveals what it will cost God to do all these wonderful things...
"Like a woman in childbirth, I cry out, I gasp and pant. I will lay waste the mountains and hills and dry up all their vegetation..."
"Hear you deaf; look, you blind, and see! Who is blind but my servant, and deaf like the messenger I send?"
This is God's anxiety, his eagerness for his lost children to receive the Servant of the Lord, the Savior. He is about to give up the treasure of heaven for their sake, and he desires deeply, even painfully, that they will see and hear their Messiah.
You may have felt passionately about many things - or desired various things or people in your life. But you have never desired God as much as he has desired you. You have never loved him as much as he has loved you. And you have never given up for him as much as he has given up for you.
The words about "laying waste" and "drying up" in the first verses of this text make it sound like Law. But this is the sweetest Gospel, a love letter from God to you.