A reflection on Zephaniah
We have made a world of our own,
and called its brokenness good.
We have bowed before the things we made,
turned away from the One who made us,
grown comfortable with indifference,
and learned to live with what destroys us.
Even those entrusted with truth
have forgotten how to speak it.
And God will not call this good.
Not because he is weary of us,
an angry father whose patience has run out,
but because we were made for more
than the kingdoms we have built,
more than the pain we have learned to tolerate.
His judgement is not the end of his love,
but love refusing to leave us
as we are.
Yet the healing does not come cheaply.
The things that wound us run deep,
and the road to redemption
passes through the cross.
A student once asked,
Does it ever look as though we win?
Perhaps not from where we stand,
not when the world is still so broken.
But walk with Jesus long enough
and you begin to see
what he has quietly taken away,
what he has healed,
what he has made new.
And then, in Zephaniah,
the music changes.
The city once called defiled
is summoned to rejoice.
Sing.
Shout.
Be glad.
Rejoice.
Words tumbling over one another
like colours blending on a canvas,
each adding another shade
to a joy too deep for silence.
For the Lord has taken away
the judgement against you.
The King is among his people.
The mighty warrior has come
not to destroy them,
but to save.
Do not let your hands hang limp.
Do not surrender your face to despair.
The world is broken,
but this is not its final day.
And then comes the wonder
we scarcely dare believe.
The God who judges
is the God who delights.
The God who rescues
is the God who rejoices.
Not merely accepting us,
not reluctantly forgiving,
not counting the days
until we fail again.
He takes delight in us.
We imagine him distant,
stern-faced,
watching for our next mistake,
his patience almost exhausted.
But Zephaniah gives us another picture.
A father carrying his frightened child
through the darkening woods,
singing until the fear subsides.
A parent speaking words of love
over a child at bedtime,
until one morning the child asks,
Tell me what I’m good at.
A warrior who sees danger approaching
and says,
I am coming for you.
And beyond them all,
the God who does not simply listen
to the songs of the redeemed.
He sings over them.
For one night, at Passover,
Jesus gathered with his friends
to remember another rescue.
They sang the ancient songs,
the songs of deliverance,
the songs their ancestors had sung.
And among them, Psalm 118:
The stone the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone.
Did the words linger
as he left the table,
crossed the darkened valley
and entered Gethsemane?
Did he hear the distant voices
still singing in Jerusalem,
unaware that the rejected stone
was walking towards the cross?
The God who sings over his people
had come to stand among them.
And the One who would take away their sin
walked into the darkness,
carrying their redemption
in his own wounded hands.
Original message by Lou Fortier
The Bridge Church Macquarie Park NSW
1 November 2021
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