“What god of any nation has ever been able to save its people from my power? So what makes you think that the LORD can rescue Jerusalem from me?”

Isaiah 36:20

After chapters of divine oracles, Isaiah 36 begins an historical section that focuses on events around 700 B.C. While King Hezekiah reigned over Judah, the Assyrians, who had recently overthrown the northern kingdom of Israel, threatened to do the same to the southern kingdom. King Sennacherib of Assyria sent representatives to threaten the leaders of Judah. With taunts and insults, they promised terrible things for Judah unless Hezekiah surrendered.

One of their arguments for surrender seems perfectly logical on the surface. “What god of any nation has ever been able to save its people from [Sennacherib’s] power?” Answer: None, at least to this point. Assyria’s domination had been undeterred. Hence the representatives asked, “So what makes you think that the LORD can rescue Jerusalem from me?”

How often our faith asks us to believe or to do that which contradicts conventional wisdom. Logically, it makes no sense to love our enemies, to think that we’ll get ahead by serving, or to give up our lives with the hope that we’ll save them. These days, critics mock our faith much as the Assyrians did when goading Hezekiah. Why do we believe that which seems so unlikely, from a worldly point of view?

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION: When do you find your faith challenged? Are there times when you struggle to do that which you know is right because it seems so unconventional? Have you ever been teased because of your faith? How did you respond?

PRAYER: Dear Lord, though our context is so very different from that of Judah and Hezekiah, we are still hearing the same sort of challenges to our faith. Why do you pray for healing when the people you pray for don’t get well? Why do you forgive those who wrong you rather than get even? Why believe in God when the world is so full of suffering? And on, and on.

Help us, Lord, to be people of truth, people who don’t bury our heads in the sand and ignore challenges to our faith. Yet may we see the full truth, not just the problems. Give us clarity of thought and confidence of faith. Help us to trust you even as we engage with our neighbors, so that they might come to know you and worship you in spirit and in truth. Amen.