“Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down.” Do you resonate with that prayer from Isaiah 64:1? Dear God, the world is getting worse day-by-day. Crazed gunmen, religious bigots, partisan intractability, insane nuclear threats… “Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!”
This falls, I think, into the category of “Be careful what you pray for.” Isaiah goes on, “that the mountains might quake at your presence—as when fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to boil—to make your name known to your adversaries, and that the nations might tremble at your presence!” Pause on that. Imagine that God comes down, the mountains quake, or as Psalm 46 imagines, “though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble at its swelling.” If that happens, I’ll likely have a heart attack.
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). One of the joys of living at this time in history is our rapidly increasing knowledge of the universe. This weekend we had a “super moon,” larger to our eyes because it was 16,000 miles closer to earth than normal. That’s way longer than your vacation trip but tiny compared to the vastness of creation we’re learning from our space telescopes and amazing probes. With this increasing knowledge comes greater curiosity and greater wonderment. Christians call it the “fear of God.” “Who created these?” (Isaiah 40:26).
I sat in church yesterday thinking about this. Dear God, I dread You rending the heavens and coming down attended by cosmic disasters. But I do want You to come down. The world needs Your righteousness and justice and I need Your peace. Maybe if You would come down as a gentle baby, Immanuel. That’s the only way I will survive Your coming down.
Comments