As Kingfishers Catch Fire: A Conversation on the Ways of God Formed by the Words of God

by Eugene H. Peterson

We ask, “Really? Can that make any difference? What can a child do?” Isaiah, we must remember, preached in desperate times. He was involved in an international crisis. He walked the streets of Jerusalem with persons stretched to the breaking point with anxiety, with pain, with fear, their hearts heavy with the burdens of sin, their arms aching from carrying the baggage of guilt. They were people like us—they needed help, they needed deliverance, they needed relief, and they needed hope. They needed all the things that persons who have been faithless and have lost their sense of integrity need, persons who have rebelled and lost a sense of security, persons who have trivialized the sacred and found themselves separated from meaning and reduced to boredom and banality. They needed a gospel adequate for their needs, and their needs were extreme and desperate. To such people Isaiah said, “To us a child is born, to us a son is given.”