December 12, 2023
Isaiah 4:2-6
Advent, Day 10
“Then the Lord will create over all of Mount Zion and over those who assemble there a cloud of smoke by day and a glow of flaming fire by night; over everything the glory will be a canopy. It will be a shelter and shade from the heat of the day, and a refuge and hiding place from the storm and rain.”
I've never thought about the glory of God being a shelter and a refuge.
This ties in a bit with yesterday's passage about knowing who God is and that providing confidence, I think.
The storms of life will come. That's a given. Nobody gets through this life unscathed. All of us are going to face pain, heartbreak, and grief. The question is what will we do when that pain, heartbreak, and grief become present in our lives?
We can fight. We can flee. We can freeze.
Or so the contemporary wisdom goes.
But, what if there was something else that we could do? What if we could rest? What if we could find rest in the knowledge that the glory of God offers refuge and shelter in the storm?
I typically fight when hard stuff comes. Anger is my default emotional response. I don't get sad, I don't get scared, I get angry.
Over the last few years though I have been learning from watching my friend die that there's a different path. There is this path of rest. This way of yielding to Divine love and in so doing grieve and also find joy. It's a tension of the already but not yet that gets played out in real time.
Today I'm wrestling with the question, “Can I choose to rest in the glorious divine love in the face of grief and pain?”
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