EMBODY: ISAIAH 40:1-31
🌗 WANING MOON: Look closely at the details – GO HERE LAST
Moon & Marginalia carries one passage across a lunar month — Embody is where we sit with the waning moon to find ways to anchor ourselves in the lesson of the passage. The whole Isaiah 40 cycle is free, start to finish. If you want to keep going beyond this cycle, you can upgrade to a paid subscription and get the next cycle and the archives (started August 2026).
OVERVIEW
Full Text
40:1-31
Big Idea
The God above all others is making a way home and will sustain them on the journey.
Church of St. Brendan the Navigator, Bantry, County Cork, Ireland
Detail of third window of the south wall with stained glass depicting Isaiah 40:11 He gathers the lambs in his arms. Created by Watson & Co, Youghal, in 1906.
Photo: Andreas F. Borchert, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE, via Wikimedia Commons
Embody
This week, it’s time to rest, reflect, and reset as we move through. During this phase of the moon, we will reflect on what it means to EMBODY what we see in the passage — integrating the wisdom into our lives as we prepare to start the cycle over with a new passage the next week.
I’ll provide some prompts and practices to help you weave the passage into your life. Take what you’d like and leave the rest. It’s your practice, your pace.
One Thing
If you take one thing from this week, it is the dynamics of empty power — of everything — and full justice when it’s in the hands (or arms) of God.
Breath Prayer
This is a short and simple contemplative practice. Sit quietly and close your eyes. Follow your breaths, and use these simple phrases to anchor you in the passage. If sitting still is hard for you, you can also do this on a walk or some other repetitive activity.
Inhale: Though the wait strains me
Exhale: I can find comfort in you.
Simmer Pot Prayer
I like a sensory experience. So a simmer pot helps me to use scents to remind me of something, and the tactile experience of putting it together helps me to remember the main points. You can use a small pot on the stove on low, an oil diffuser, maybe an oil or simply syrup you put together and use in a meal, or (like me) use a candle warmer.
Here’s a recipe for one for you:
Cinnamon — for comfort
Vanilla — for trust and hope
Orange — for clarity and alertness
Together, these can help you remember what this passage invokes and prompt you to look for the activity of God in your own place today — the way you are being seen and supported by YHWH even when it doesn’t feel like it.
Candle Release
If you need something that can help you act out the release you’re seeking, I love a little touch of fire (but like, safely). Here’s a way to add a little ritual so it feels a little more like closure.
Write the name of the thing that looms largest over you right now on a slip of paper. Hold it in your open palm and pray it gets “re-weighed” in God’s hand — mere dust on the scale. Notice what your body does when the thing gets smaller.
Now light a candle. Fold the paper up. And let it burn.
Write down the words of comfort you most needed in your own season of exile (even if that’s right now) — the thing you wished someone had said to you. Read these words to yourself slowly, the way te voice reads them over Jerusalem. Can you receive this comfort as something spoken to you, not earned?
Sit with them for as long as you’d like. Then blow out the candle.
Small, Simple Steps
Bring Comfort
Because oppression won’t outlast God’s justice, take one tangible act of tzedakah this week — showing up, advocating, giving, accompanying. Pick one person in their own exile and carry good news tot hem in a form they can feel: a meal, a visit, a message that says your struggle is seen.
Actively Wait
Name what you’re waiting on, and pick one faithful action to take while you wait. Put it on your calendar this week.
Tell me in the comments which activities you did and how it made you feel and what you’re looking forward to in the next moon cycle as we look at another passage.
Moon & Marginalia carries one passage across a lunar month — Embody is where we sit with the waning moon to find ways to anchor ourselves in the lesson of the passage. The whole Isaiah 40 cycle is free, start to finish. If you want to keep going beyond this cycle, you can upgrade to a paid subscription and get the next cycle and the archives (started August 2026).
Sources consulted include:
The Message of Isaiah 40-55: A Literary-Theological Commentary by John Goldingay
Isaiah, part of The Old Testament Library Series, by Brevard S. Childs
The Prophecy of Isaiah: An introduction & Commentary by J. Alec Motyer
The Queer Bible Commentary.
The Women’s Bible Commentary.
Prophets, from Robert Alter’s translation and commentary of the Hebrew Bible.
Various articles.