Good News Wrapped Around the Broken

(from Isaiah 61:1-3)

At the bottom of every burnt-out fire
there is a heap of soft gray ash.

Long ago, in the days of the prophets,
there were people who sat down in ashes
because their hearts were broken.
Their city lay in ruins,
and their hopes lay in ruins beside it.
They cried in the cold gray dust
and wondered if anyone, anywhere,
even saw them.

That is mourning.
That is a heart with the breath knocked out of it.

Then God gave a promise to Isaiah,
the same prophet who had called the hungry
to come and eat at God's free feast.
The promise sounded like this:

Someone is coming.

Someone with good news
for the ones who have no good news left.
Someone to come close to the broken-hearted
and bind them up,
the way you wrap a soft cloth
around a hurt that is bleeding.

Someone to open the locked door
where the prisoners are crying,
and say to them,
You can come out now.
You are free.

This Someone would come
with his hands full of gifts.
He would find the ones sitting in the ashes,
and kneel down in the dust beside them,
and do a trade.

He would take their ashes
and give them a crown.

He would take their crying
and pour out oil of gladness,
warm and sweet, like a feast.

He would take the heavy gray blanket of their sadness
and wrap them instead in praise,
like a bright new coat.

Can you imagine such a trade?

Many long years went by.
Then one day a young man stood up
in a room full of people,
and someone handed him a scroll.
He unrolled it,
and there were Isaiah's words,
the very ones,
waiting for him.

He read them out loud,
slow and clear:
The Spirit of the Lord is on me.
He has sent me to heal the broken-hearted,
to set the prisoners free.

Then he rolled the scroll back up.
The whole room went still.
He looked at them, and he said:

Today. This is happening today.
The Someone is me.

It was Jesus.

The good news had come walking
right into the ashes.
The binding-up of broken hearts
had begun.

And that trade has not stopped.
He is still kneeling down
beside the ones who weep.
He has already begun it in you.

One day he will finish it.
He will lift the last face out of the last ashes,
wipe away the last tear,
and the singing will never stop.