Hear, you deaf; look, you blind, and see! Who is blind but my servant and deaf like the messenger I send? Who is blind like the one in covenant with me, blind like the servant of the LORD? – Isaiah 42:18-19

Today's Scripture Reading (July 25, 2020): Isaiah 42

Author Ahmed Mostafa argues that some toxic people cannot be saved. "You're damaged beyond repair that even if I wanted to fix you I couldn't." The problem with Mostafa's argument is that being damaged beyond repair is the reality of more of us than we might want to admit. But the even bigger problem is that too many of us recognize the damage when we find it in someone else, and too few of us see the damage when it resides in us. Welcome to what we call life. I have always found it surprising that when people get real and try to describe to me the kind of people that they cannot stand to be around, how often they are portraying themselves and don't even know it. Know-it-alls can't stand being around people who are the self-determined experts in everything. Usually, they don't like experts of any kind. Negative people typically hate being around other negative people. It is an interesting quirk in our emotional makeup.

Isaiah turns his attention to the children of Israel. And he makes a command that cannot be followed. "Hear, you deaf; look, you blind, and see" (Isaiah 42:18)! Most should be able to see the humor in the statement. The deaf can't hear, and the blind can't see. But Isaiah speaks something even crazier. God has made the blind his servants. But how does a blind man serve? How does he find the things that the master needs when he can't even see them? God makes the deaf his messenger. But again, how does a deaf man, who cannot hear the message, faithfully carry that message to the one who needs to receive it. The deaf and blind are broken, and they are, therefore, disqualified from any act of service.

Except that Isaiah is talking about us. The message he extends to his brothers and sisters applies as well to those of us living in the twenty-first century. We are the blind and deaf. Just like the people of Isaiah's day, we are so sure that we know the will of God that we have stopped looking for it. We have become blind. We are so confident that we carry the message of God that we stop listening for it. We speak our human philosophies, saying that they are the will of God. We express our judgments with the voice of God, and never even question if our "Thus saith the Lord" is remotely true. We are blind servants and deaf messengers because we have chosen to be.

But the first step back to finding the message of God is to admit that we are the blind guides. We don't have to look any further than our own lives to find the deaf messengers. We are broken beyond repair. But, luckily, we serve the one who heals the blind and the deaf, and who puts back together those whom life has broken.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Isaiah 43