By Elliot Ritzema
The psychotherapist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl wrote in his classic book Man’s Search for Meaning, “There is nothing in the world, I venture to say, that would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions as the knowledge that there is a meaning in one’s life. There is much wisdom in the words of Nietzsche: ‘He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.’”
Not many of us have, or will, endure what Frankl had to endure in a concentration camp. Yet we can learn from him the insidious nature of hopelessness and the importance of meaning as a motivator to have courage and continue to persevere in difficult circumstances.
In Isaiah 43, the prophet addressed the people of Judah who had been taken away to exile in Babylon. He called them not to be afraid. The fear of the exile was that God had abandoned them, that they were left alone in the world to fend for themselves. They had lost their why to live for.
In this passage, God’s people were given a new why. In spite of their failures, their blindness and deafness laid out in Isaiah 42:18–25, the God who created and formed them would redeem them and once again call them His own. God would give Egypt, Cush, and Seba in exchange for them (Isaiah 43:3–4). This language of redemption—of paying a price to set someone free—is found throughout Scripture. Over and over, as in Psalm 111:9, God is shown to be the God who values His people so highly that He is willing to pay an astronomically high price for their release. This redemption was not on account of who Israel was but whose they were.
Like them, we have been redeemed—bought out of bondage to sin and set free by God. The price God paid for us was His own blood. He did this through His superabundant grace, which He has poured out on us (Ephesians 1:7–8). We are His! This is the Father who overcomes our shame, welcoming us with open arms when we did not believe we were worthy to be called His children (Luke 15:21).
Shame can take away our why. It can cause us to lose hope, believing that nothing will ever change. What do we do when we are ashamed of what we have done and feel that we could never be loved? We could try to minimize the shame—we could act like what causes us shame is no big deal. We could say we feel shame only because of social norms. We could pretend that the fire licking around us doesn’t exist (Isaiah 42:25).
Or we could acknowledge that we really do have something to be ashamed of. We could admit we fall short of who we were created to be. We have wandered. We have sinned. And then, casting aside fear, we can trust God to bring us safely through the flood and the fire (Isaiah 43:2).
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