Read // Isaiah 64:1-9
Isaiah is some kind of preacher! He actually pleads with the LORD to ‘rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains would tremble before you!’ This is not your everyday prayer. Tearing open the veil of Heaven, revealing the mystery of what is beyond creation, causing even mountains to feel and to feel fear. There’s nothing safe, saving about it. Or, perhaps, there is? After all, isn’t this what Christmas is all about? God coming down, entering flesh, tearing through the birth canal, leaving behind the majesty of Creator for the lowliness of the created. Yet he came, he comes and for something so much greater than we want to believe.
He came because of us and for nothing less than this – we are his, we belong to him, we bear his mark upon us – the mark of a Father for his child. A parent knows, and perhaps only a parent knows, that the love we bear for these little ones is different than any other love. It is a love that gives us a glimpse of what it is to love the way the Father loves us. Shall we walk away from this great love, only color Christmas with gaudy wrapping paper, brightly lit trees? Listen to Isaiah – ‘O LORD, you are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand.’ Shall we loosen our grip and let Him be the one who shapes our lives?
Pray // Father in Heaven, we pray for the courage to ask you to come down, to enter our lives as you did in a stable birth so long ago. Let us breathe the courage and joy we need to truly love, to wholly give ourselves to you. Amen.
Author: Sue Minor