God of Heaven Come Down

The reality that God has revealed himself in time and space is huge! Without him doing that we would only be blindly groping in the dark trying to figure out who he is and what he is like. Yet we sometimes struggle to understand the dynamics of our relationship with him, don't we? Let's read from Isaiah 63:15 - 64:4. Rather than God speaking to us, here the Holy Spirit leads us to speak to God this prayer through his prophet Isaiah. What impresses you about it? For me it is this...

Look down from heaven and see.... Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down.... Come down to make your name known.... For when you did awesome things that we did no expect, you came down.... You come to the help of those who gladly do right, who remember your ways. (63:15; 64:1-3, 5)

There is nothing more frustrating than believing in God's willingness and power to do mighty things and yet seeing him sit on his hands. That is especially aggrevating when the thing that we're asking for seems so obviously to be the best thing. Are you with me on that? Sometimes I want to say, "God, where are you? Everyone here knows that the best thing for everyone would be for you to...heal my loved one...bring a wave of new growth to your church...change this person's heart...stop that tsunami...provide for those children...help the Cowboys win another Super Bowl! Okay, maybe not everyone thinks that last one would be best, but your true children do!" (All right, I'm kidding!)

The people of Israel were feeling the same thing and Isaiah gave a voice to those emotions here. Why wasn't God coming to their rescue? Why were people dying prematurely at the hands of their enemies? Isn't he the God who saves? And God was perfectly okay letting those emotions be expressed in his holy scriptures. There's a reason for that. They are real and it's part of the human experience. God doesn't always agree with our evaluation of what is best. I suspect that's because we are so short-sighted. We see the here and the now. We imagine we can foresee what lies ahead but our premonitions often turn out to be so different than reality.

Imagine an ant trying to advise a rug maker on the pattern of the fibers he's weaving together, and doing this while standing on the unfinished rug. He objects, "Why are you putting that color thread on next? That doesn't look right! What are you putting black into it for? Nobody likes black anyway! It's too...depressing!" I am quite sure that I am in a far worse position than that ant in critquing God's weaving of the story of my life, and even more so the world's. I can't see the big picture. How could I? I'm much too close to one very small spot in the overall design. I can't discern the sweeping patterns and how they all interact with each other. I may think black moments in life a very poor choice on God's part, but I can't see how the black borders accentuate the brilliance and depth of the surrounding colors.

What I want is for God to come down. Come down to earth. Come down to my level. And he has...in the person of Jesus Christ. And now he's asking me to trust his heart, his wisdom and his power to finish his artwork and to make it beautiful, as he alone sees the big picture from his throne on high. He's the rug maker who became an ant so that he could communicate to me a little of what he's up to. I love that about him! I sometimes expect him to think like a fellow ant. But it will work out a lot better in the end that he has returned to his place as the rug maker. God, I'm so glad you're both a next door Savior and the King on high! May your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

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