Today’s from Isaiah starts with the powerful, apocalyptic vision of the Lord saying: “Lo, I am about to create new heavens and a new earth…”

Well isn’t this what we need now?  A new earth anyway.  An earth where all can live well enough, in peace and harmony with ourselves and others; plants, animals, people.   Where no longer the sound of weeping shall be heard.  And what about that vision of Jerusalem?  For I create Jerusalem to be a joy and its people to be a delight; I will rejoice in Jerusalem and exult in my people.  Who can exult in Jerusalem today?  A Jerusalem divided, fought over, used and abused by those in power. Jerusalem, that symbolic city, and the rest of our earthly home.  We can only pray as we do in the psalm that God brings us up from the nether world, preserves us from among those going down into the pit.  That we are not the ones wallowing in the pit of power and self-interest, but that we join together to create a new earth, a new way of being as people of the earth.