Today’s scripture:

Isaiah 26:7-15

The way of the righteous is level; O Just One, you make smooth the path of the righteous. In the path of your judgments, O Lord, we wait for you; your name and your renown are the soul’s desire. My soul yearns for you in the night, my spirit within me earnestly seeks you. For when your judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness. If favor is shown to the wicked, they do not learn righteousness; in the land of uprightness they deal perversely and do not see the majesty of the Lord. O Lord, your hand is lifted up, but they do not see it. Let them see your zeal for your people, and be ashamed. Let the fire for your adversaries consume them.

O Lord, you will ordain peace for us, for indeed, all that we have done, you have done for us. O Lord our God, other lords besides you have ruled over us, but we acknowledge your name alone. The dead do not live; shades do not rise— because you have punished and destroyed them, and wiped out all memory of them. But you have increased the nation, O Lord, you have increased the nation; you are glorified; you have enlarged all the borders of the land.

 

The above link is just part of a Ted Talk.  If you are familiar with Ted Talks you will know that they are designed to share ideas.  TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design and their motto is “Ideas worth spreading.”  If I am not careful I can spend a whole couple of hours on Ted just listening to all sorts of ideas worth spreading.  They range from leadership ideas to world peace to how to cartoons that make a difference in the world.  If you haven’t check out TED, please do.  I walk away usually inspired.

 

Anyway, this particular talk is by Sarah Kay. Sarah is a Spoken Word Poet who helped establish the organization called Project Voice.  This project aspires to encourages young people to engage in the world around them using Spoken World Poetry.  Sarah especially hopes to encourage young people to use poetry to play with words, to explore current issues, etc.  In essence they are putting together a platform for people to see the world differently and then speak that to others.  They are training people to call out what they see in different ways.

 

This particular spoken word piece came to my mind this morning for just the first line.  “I will have her call me point B.” The idea is that the daughter is point A and the mother is on the other end of the line.  From point A to point B it’s pretty direct, it seems to be pretty guided and at the end is someone with unconditional love.  There is a path to walk to get to the one who is loved and who is loving.  Point A begins the journey and point B is where peace is found.  Our prophet Isaiah this morning is calling out this type of relationship in a different form of Spoken Word poetry.  Through Isaiah’s poetry we are reminded that we are Point A and God is point B (God is also everything in between).  There is a path that guides us…if we have our eyes on point B it seems pretty clear and flat.  In fact we yearn for that path wherever we may be.

 

This morning, listen to some poetry.  What would your poetry cry out?  Maybe even try writing it down.  I would love to read about your path if you need someone to read it.  What would your poem look like?  What would you tell the world through word this morning about what God is doing in the world?

 

Prayer:  O God, give us the words to sing out your grace this morning.  Give us the encouragement to reach you at point B today.  Give us the ears to listen when people are calling out their poetry to us and you.  Amen.