Our understanding of God is the answer to prayer; getting things from God is God’s indulgence of us. When God stops giving us things, He brings us into the place where we can begin to understand Him.
~ Oswald Chambers
In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of His robe filled the temple. Above Him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!” And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. And I said: “Woe is me! For I am undone; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!” Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth and said: “Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.”
And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?” Then I said, “Here I am! Send me.” And He said, “Go, and say to this people: “‘Keep on hearing, but do not understand; keep on seeing, but do not perceive.’ Make the heart of this people dull, and their ears heavy, and blind their eyes;
lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed.” Then I said, “How long, O Lord?” And He said: “Until cities lie waste without inhabitant, and houses without people, and the land is a desolate waste, and the LORD removes people far away, and the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land. And though a tenth remain in it, it will be burned again,
like a terebinth or an oak, whose stump remains when it is felled.” The Holy Seed is its stump.
~ A Vision of A Larger Reality, in Isaiah 6
Oh beloved, it is true.
There is a larger reality. G_d is well beyond our capabilities to understand. Oh, it is not that we don’t know Him. But the knowing is so small as to be truly infinitesimal. That which has a beginning, though he may now be immortal, is still finite.
And finite can only fit within forever.
This is where the mind blowing begins, though.
All of G_d, is everywhere. It is not that He is just some sort of really, really, really big Being. He is.
He is bigger than time.
He is bigger than space.
He is bigger than eternity.
He is bigger than existence, itself.
And… All of Him, is within the believer who has asked Him to make ourselves His dwelling place. This is called the “simplicity” of G_d. He is, all of Himself, everywhere.
Then, to any part of us that thinks we can begin to understand His simplicity, let us add in a level of complexity that is completely beyond our ability: G_d is One. And, G_d is Three. This Triunity is the deepest of mysteries of the reality of Who He is.
It is as if G_d were so much larger than forever, and so full of power, and strength, and Love, and wholeness that He bursts forth from Himself in triple-expanding infinities. These infinities have nowhere to go, expect to combine themselves fully with each other. Said more simply: G_d is so there, that He is thrice present.
It was into a situation like this, one where G_d was local, but the all of Them – in this one place – was so effulgent as to cause even the ultra-beings known as Seraphim, to have to shield themselves from the full view.
They were too Beautiful
They were too Amazing
too Powerful
too Good
too Present.
And it was into this scene that Isaiah, a man like you or I, arrived.
The language in the Hebrew is so colorful. The “undone” in the passage above, speaks of being completely lost, or to be like a piece of cloth that is becoming completely unraveled (as in, down to the threads).
Can we see it?
Isaiah showed us a reality that is for us as well. Isaiah saw Him. Isaiah witnessed the reality that They were so real, so everything, that just seeing Him drives a man to come apart at the seams.
So, hopefully the point is clear here. How is it for you (and this fool of a writer)? Does G_d trouble us? Does His work and presence move us deeply? If not, you and i may just be worshipping the wrong god. Tonight is your night, beloved. Time to come apart. We will, if we truly see Them.
We demand proof of God, forgetting that if we could prove God he would be within the compass of our rationalities, and then our logical mind would be our own grotesque God.
~George Arthur Buttrick (1892-1980)
