July 28 - Isaiah 1-4: Prepare to be Slapped

I'm tired...not sure if it's from all the Crabb and Peterson reading as we enter the Prophecy Books or from the varied relational experiences of the past week or the triathlon training or the generalized feeling of condemnation I've been tempted with lately.  Maybe all of the above?  But, not in the best place for the message of judgment from Isaiah.  Or, maybe exactly in the place where God needs me to be.

"The message you deliver in Isaiah's first thirty-nine chapters - and You repeat it over and over - is that You're holy, and I'm not...  From unholy  misery - exposed and condemned - to holy joy freely given and promised forever:  that is the story of My love."  (66LL)

Unholy misery.  That's a phrase I can identify with.  And God is clearly showing me my face in these first four chapters of Isaiah - slapping me, as it were, with the reality of who I am:

My people don't know up from down.  Shame!  Misguided God-dropouts, staggering under their guilt-baggage...

Why bother even trying to do anything with you when you just keep to your bullheaded ways?  You keep beating your heads against brick walls.  Everything within you protests against you...

When you come before me, whoever gave you the idea of acting like this, running here and there, doing this and that - all this sheer commotion in the place provided for worship?  (1:3, 5, 12)

Slapped.  And deservingly so.  How often do I confuse up from down?  Spiritualizing self-protection instead of calling it sin; choosing to live in my pain rather than loving out of it;  seeking catharsis instead of holiness;  claiming my busy-ness as ministry.  All of this protests within me, but I stick to my bullheadedness and do what I know.

"No matter what is happening to you, your worst problem is in you.  And that problem is not how badly you feel, it is how poorly you love.  Your failure to love Me above all else and to love others at any cost to yourself defines your unholiness." (66LL)

I feel the sting of the slap.  I want to "head for the hills, hide in the caves from the terror of God, from his dazzling presence? (2:10)"   Father, help me not to anesthetize, but to run to You, to the only One who can give a "self-sacrificing, reconciling embrace that forgives all that is unholy within [me]."  (66LL)