Isaiah reminds us in today’s first reading that the God we believe in is a God of paradox. We are told that God is a volatile God, with outbursts of emotions that span the gamut; and yet, God is also steadfast in covenant faithfulness and love. Do we trust this God?

The reading today feels a bit like whiplash. We rejoice and raise glad cries because, as Isaiah assures us, God can make all things possible. Even after having been forsaken, outcast, and dejected, we are called by God and can cast aside our shameful past. This is a God of hope, of good things, of renewal! 

But then, the next line fills me with dread. Isaiah tells us that God admits: For a brief moment, I abandoned you.  

What? 

God hid God’s face from me. Out of anger. God abandoned me. 

And yet, immediately afterwards, Isaiah assures us that God takes us back. But this feels quite unsure. It feels shaky. I don’t know if I am comforted. Do I trust this fickle God? Do I trust God’s promises? Especially in the face of those times I do feel abandoned by God, when I feel dejected and outcast, consumed by grief, or trapped by fear?

This is where I have to step out of the volatile roller-coaster of the day-to-day and remind myself: what grounds me? What is my anchor? What is my rock? When the storm rages, what foundation do I stand on? 

Because the storm will rage. Even God admits to it. Life at times will be brutal, painful, lonely, unfair, trying, confusing, scattered, scary. But the storms don’t last forever. They never do. Not even the storms caused by God last longer than a moment. 

So what is the thing that lasts forever? When life is unsettling, the floor shaking and the winds raging - what hope, what light, what peace stills the storms?

“Though the mountains leave their place and the hills be shaken, my love shall never leave you, nor my covenant of peace be shaken.” 

It’s a baby, isn’t it? 

It’s the paradox of God, the author of the universe, loving us so passionately, so deeply and so unconditionally, that not even God’s anger keeps God from becoming enfleshed among us. It’s the paradox of a God who fulfills God’s promises, and comes to us as a helpless child, born of a virgin, a king in a stable in Bethlehem. It’s an almighty God who preaches humility and mercy, who exalts the lowly, who dines with sinners. It’s a God who dies to conquer death, so that we, though mortal, might live eternally.

It’s the God of all Being coming to you, asking you for your “fiat,” so that you can create room in your heart, to receive the foundation of the world.

So what grounds you? 

Would you stake your life on it?