Please read the passage before reading the commentary.
I learned as a child I was not to ask God for signs. I was to live a life of faith in God. When I first heard the story of Ahaz, I thought he was a good, faith-filled person. Then I found out why Ahaz had refused to ask God for a sign: he dd not believe in this God. To him God was an enemy or a no-body.
We often read this story with that of Luke’s Gospel, 1:26-38, the story of Gabriel’s visit to Mary and the request that she become the mother of God’s Son. She asked for a sign, because of her faith in God, to help her understand what God wanted of her.
Isaiah’s sign for Ahaz was that a young woman, one of marriageable age and not necessarily a virgin, would conceive and bear a son. By Luke’s time, the term often meant virgin. The sign could mean that the king’s wife would have a child, and the Davidic kingship would continue. It could also mean that there would be future generations, and the human race would continue to exist. To future generations, it said that the world God created would continue. It was saying that God will remain in control of the world and that good will triumph over bad.
We are less than a week from Christmas, the goal of Advent. It is time to reaffirm our belief in God and God’s promise to conquer evil with good. The call is for us today and, after today, for all the tomorrow to come, that we be forces overcoming evil with good, being the signs that God made us to be by doing good. Such is the challenge of the prophet for us in this time of the world’s life and ours as well.
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