One of the questions I am continually asking as I read and write songs through Isaiah is, “Who is he talking to, right now?” I know he’s talking to me, but I can’t help but think that this is a word for more than just me.

I mean, I know it’s for me. In 600BC, this was a word to a community that had severely compromised its identity, purpose, and relationship with God for the sake of financial security and social comfort. And the more I think about this, the more I see that I could very easily be a contributor in a society just like that one.

I mean, if I was in a place where my land was constantly being threatened by other nations and I didn’t know whether the next conquest would be my last, I would most certainly be tempted by material security and comfort.

And though my land isn’t constantly being threatened the way Israel was in BC, I’m still very aware of how much my soul seems addicted to comfort, so much more than I knew and wanted. The problem: I come from an oral tradition and an ethnic consciousness that tells a story of continual slavery. And when you’re convinced that you’re in slavery, then you’re in survival mode. You’ll do anything to keep your angry masters happy so that you stay alive, and that includes keeping things as peaceful and comfortable as possible.

God’s people abandoned their covenant because God’s people forgot that they weren’t oppressed slaves anymore. And out of their own “forgetful slavery illusion,” they enslaved the very people who needed most to know that they were no longer oppressed slaves.

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Your system sees the poor and grinds their faces
Crushes their spirits, and it breaks their souls
You devoured the grace I set aside for them
And decided what they don’t deserve

But their blood and tears cry out to me
And all you sown, you will surely reap