Holiday parties are the times when you run into people you haven’t seen in a while. Maybe people you have been avoiding, people that just rub you the wrong way.
And parties also have unexpected guests. Those uninvited intrusions that just throw everything off.
While Christmas is something people look forward to, Advent reminds us that God’s coming presence isn’t always as welcome as we might think.
For the next couple of weeks we are going to look at Advent through the lectionary texts of Isaiah (subscribe in the sidebar so you don’t miss any of these reflections).
Rending the Heaven
Isaiah 64:1-9 starts off with the plea that God would “tear open” the heavens and come down so that God’s presence would be manifest to the nations.
This rending of the heavens, this arrival of God is an awesome and terrible event. “Tearing open” the heavens is a cosmic, end of the ages, type of event. It signals the end of all things…and the beginning.
Isaiah is praying, hoping, and waiting, for God to put all things right—no matter the cost.
To understand how God’s presence changes everything, and is the real story of the entire Bible, check out Does God Really Like Me? Discovering the God Who Wants To Be With Us.
Rupturing our Relationship
While this might be a “gracious gash in the universe“, Isaiah knows that the arrival of God won’t just rend the heavens. It will reveal the rupture—the sin—in our relationships.
When God crashes the party our sin will be revealed, our transgressions will be unhidden. We will realize just how unclean and filthy we are. And our iniquities will cause us to fade like dead leaves blown on the wind (Is. 64:5-6).
Tearing at the Heart
To pray for God’s arrival — to pray that God would tear the fabric of reality and come down — means we must also acknowledge the tear in the fabric of our relationship with God.
God’s presence reveals that our own hearts are torn between the things of God and the things that stand against God (Rom. 8:5-8).
As Isaiah already learned, to enter God’s presence and hear the angels cry, “Holy, Holy, Holy” means we will also cry, “Woe is me…for I am a man of unclean lips” (Is. 6:1-5).
This Advent, let our prayers for God’s presence be matched by our prayers of confession.