A Mighty Nation

Isaiah 60:1–3, 19–22 (NIV)

Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord rises upon you. See, darkness covers the earth and thick darkness is over the peoples, but the Lord rises upon you and his glory appears over you. Nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn.

The sun will no more be your light by day, nor will the brightness of the moon shine on you, for the Lord will be your everlasting light, and your God will be your glory. Your sun will never set again, and your moon will wane no more; the Lord will be your everlasting light, and your days of sorrow will end. Then all your people will be righteous and they will possess the land forever. They are the shoot I have planted, the work of my hands, for the display of my splendor. The least of you will become a thousand, the smallest a mighty nation. I am the Lord; in its time I will do this swiftly.

CONSIDER THIS

Have you ever heard something so unbelievable it couldn’t possibly be true? I’m sure some people have, otherwise, we wouldn’t have that old line to snap us back to reality—“it’s too good to be true.” Either because someone has warned us that life disappoints and people often fail us or because we’ve discovered it on our own. One way or another, we find ourselves in jaded, uncertain places of hopelessness. We long for something to happen, and it doesn’t. We ask for a prayer to be answered, and it isn’t. Someone promised us our ship was coming in, only to find it got lost on the way. Life and people disappoint, so we learn to guard ourselves against it with cynicism. 

In our darkness, we become cynics in faith too. We let the jadedness of real-life disappointment apply to God too. He must have forgotten. He must not care. Maybe he isn’t as faithful as I thought. It’s interesting that we apply earthy things to the divine, especially when he reminds us of his faithfulness at every turn. 

The people of God must have heard Isaiah with the same kind of uncertainty that we often hear the news that it’s “too good to be true.” For generations, God’s people had heard of promise but faced despair. They had anticipated a Messiah’s coming but felt his fulfillment was forgotten. And even as they navigated days of destruction, division, and failure Isaiah pointed to a long-ago promise that seemed impossible to fulfill. Long before these prophecies God had made a promise to Abraham that with life and relationship in covenant with God, God would reveal his favor and blessing by making a tiny family a mighty nation. A childless couple that God would upend with glory. God made that promise long before, but they were living in darkness now. Then God sweeps in with prophecy and promise to remind them of what he was already doing and what he would unfold in his time. That is the hard part—the timing. 

It’s fairly easy to believe that God is good. It’s not a huge leap to believe God is unfolding a promise he made. And, it’s not too hard to have hope that God will be faithful. It gets harder to see in the dark when it feels like the promise isn’t coming through when we’re ready for the light to break in and it doesn’t. At the end of our passage of promise and prophecy, Isaiah closes these thoughts with the tension and truth that God is acting swiftly and fulfilling his promise in his time. 

A few days ago I shared with you a New Room moment that was so very tender. Weeks after our daughter’s death I would lay prostrate on the steps of the stage, telling God I was ready to rise up from my grave. When he so very gently said, “not yet” to my eager-to-heal heart. I wasn’t mad that the Lord was holding back his healing. But I was anxious for it anyway. I would spend the next several months “in ashes” (that’s what I’ve come to call it), lingering in my grief, pulling myself into the suffering as part of my life with Christ. Though the season was unbearable in many ways, it was so very sweet in others, as the presence of Jesus was closer than breath. He leaned into my suffering with me. Because intimacy with Christ isn’t reserved for hope and healing, it’s cultivated in the pain, isolation, and uncertainty of despair too. 

Then, many months later, I began to wonder if my disappointment, suffering, and resignation to my pain had moved from a place of cultivation of life in Christ to letting the darkness unnecessarily linger. I struggled to process if it was time for a step toward healing, and invited someone to pray for the confusion to clear and help me hear if it was time to rise up from the ashes to new places of promise and life. Then, as he prayed, and the Lord’s sweet presence washed over me, I heard the Lord say this time, “Talitha koum”—rise up. Like the words he spoke over Jairus’s daughter, resurrecting her to new life. In a short season, the Lord began a new place of healing in me and did it in his timing. He was good on his promise that “not yet” wouldn’t be “never.” 

Sometimes our darkness is bound up with struggle over his timing. I wanted relief from the darkness as quickly as humanly possible. When, if I found new life in my timing, and not his, I would have missed the gift of Christ sharing in my suffering and his sweet presence so very near. The text today reminds us of the tension between darkness and light, hopelessness and fulfillment, and the reality that God has always been faithful in fulfilling his promise both swiftly and in his time. I admit, I don’t know how to reconcile those things, that God is working diligently, faithfully, and quickly to complete his covenant, and yet, it will unfold in only a way he knows and understands. 

But there is a tension to our faith. God is faithfully unfolding the completion of a promise, but it is not yet fully revealed. Christ already rules and reigns over creation, but we don’t yet live in the fullness of his kingdom. Christ has already been victorious over darkness, but we still live in the effects of it on earth as we await his coming. God is healing and redeeming those who seek him though we are not yet fully restored. The struggle is that both things can be simultaneously true when we want only one to be. 

The Advent season invites us to linger in the waiting, the season of wanting to rise up but hearing “not yet” and faithfully rejoicing as people who are already raised. As we close our time of tension, prophecy, and longing, I wish I had a particular phrase or reassurance that would resolve that tension. I guess the hope of Advent, the light in our darkness, is that while we’re in the “not yet” the “rise up” is just around the corner, for he is the Lord, and he’s proven his ability to enter in, fulfill, and redeem at every turn. Christ’s soon coming at Christmas may just be all the reminder we need. 

THE PRAYER

Almighty God, we rejoice in your faithfulness through the ages. From the first movements of creation, to the giving of a precious covenant, and the offering of your son, you have proven your goodness and grace in your perfect time. Forgive us for our impatience and our tendency to get lost in the darkness, criticizing your timing and doubting your goodness. Forgive our tendency to question your faithfulness or ability according to patterns in our plans and timelines. Help us to see the light of truth that you have always been faithful and will always be. And as that glorious Christmas Day approaches, may it be the light we need to see your faithfulness shining so brightly. In Jesus’s name, amen. 

THE QUESTION

Is there a place in your life where timing and longing for relief have caused you to doubt and pull into the darkness? Do you tend to look for God to fulfill things in your time instead of his? If you’re in a current darkness or suffering, down in your “ashes,” are you willing to linger there and trust the presence of Christ to be so very near? 

This Christmas, do you need the evidence of the Messiah’s arrival to remind you of God’s enduring faithfulness?

For the Awakening,
Sarah Wanck

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