“They’ll build houses and live in them. They’ll plant vineyards and enjoy their fruit. They will no longer build homes for someone else; nor will they plant for someone else to eat. Their lives will be like the lives of trees and live long enough to get all the use out of what they have made. No longer will they work for nothing. No longer will their children know fear. Because, they are blessed children of the Holy One, as are their children” (Isaiah 65.21-23).
This is hope, articulated by Isaiah, of a world transformed by the Holy One making all things new. It is a world of justice. It is an end to servitude. It’s an end to a system where the many work for the comfort of a few.
I believe this is a vision that we can get near but not fulfill on our own. Ultimately, a vision like this depends upon the hearts of everyone being transformed. It depends on everyone realizing the abundance that surrounds them.
There is a myth we hold to, particularly in the U.S. It’s the myth of “enough.” It’s a hazy goal that we attempt to reach, constructed by the society we live in. It’s a false promise that if we just work hard enough, earn enough, own enough then we will have enough. No one who’s pursued it has yet attained it.
Because, there is no such thing.
I sat down one day and I tried to figure out what would be enough for us. If we had three or four million dollars, that would be enough, I calculated. We could pay off our house, the houses of our families, clear their debts, and still have plenty to keep us fed and sheltered and clothed through the rest of our lives. Yep, I said to my soul, that would be enough.
Truth is, I know it wouldn’t be. Nothing ever will be; because, we live in a world of scarcity. There is only so much of things: so much food, so much water, so much money. And if someone else has it, that means I cannot.
Isaiah’s vision is based on something that we in this broken world cannot conceive: abundance. The world that God transforms is one where there is more than enough for everyone. It is where the wounds of climate change have been healed and the rain and sun come in equal portions.
We can do things to bring us closer to Isaiah’s vision. There are systems to transform, habits to change that will allow our planet to heal, justice to struggle toward. But these will not bring us to this vision, to this place on the Holy Mountain.
To see this, we have to allow the Holy One to transform our hearts and minds to destroy this myth of enough in order to have enough. We have to understand that it is only when we, all of us, are transformed, we can step into that place where we worry not about what we will eat or what we will wear; because, none of us are worried about there being enough.
And it is only then that there will be.
Jesus, in your time on earth you tried to show us that there was enough for us all. In this season, I want to believe that; because, in believing there can be.