Punishment, pt. 2
We tend to think of growth as a straight line—upward, onward, done. But the prophets of Israel knew better. Their books, read together, trace something closer to a spiral: naming what’s broken, feeling its weight, and finding a way back to life on the other side. Not accusation, punishment, and renewal as courtroom terms, but as the shape of how anything—a person, a people, a planet—actually changes. In this series, we'll walk through the book of Isaiah as a map for that spiral, exploring how this same re-ordering movement can re-order us: naming what's true, grieving what's gone wrong, and rising into something more whole.
This week, Mike Roth asks how we might learn to have faith in death as part of life, exploring how we can discern the endings that meet us, grieve them honestly, and, in time, open our arms to them.