The Digital Revelation

Do you not know? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood since the earth was founded? God sits enthroned above the circle of the earth, and its people are like grasshoppers. God stretches out the heavens like a canopy, and spreads them out like a tent to live in. – Isaiah 40:21-22 (NIV)

This text really preaches. It has cadence. It has rhetorical capacity. It has poetry. “What, you didn’t know?” It praises God. It shows how grasshopper the human is compared to the cosmic nature of the God who is larger than the earth. God who makes a canopy over the heavens! Wow to that God.

And un-wow to the preacher in Covid-Tide, even with Queen Vaccinius on the way. How to approach the Epiphanous of pre-Covid and preach the size and majesty of the divine, when a virus – small in its miraculous microscopic power – prevails?

How very grasshopper the preacher today feels! We are not preachers. We are now video content producers. In theater, the actor prevails. In film, the producer and director prevails. In preaching, God prevails.

But didn’t I hear? Didn’t I know? Wasn’t I told early and often? Why did I have to join the Cloud Appreciation Society to remember God’s beauty? Or join the Aurorasaurus web site to be reminded of God’s grandeur?

Because I live a diminished life, technologically enabled, that’s why.

Still and nevertheless, God is also undiminished in the magical digital, the teleological technological, the microscopic chip. Nothing is outside God’s realm. Let’s preach again like we did last summer – and preach even better next summer.

Prayer
Teach us to God, to worship anew and make the word fresh again.