Sleeping is hard these nights. It’s hard to sleep in my comfortable bed when I know people are hunkered down in hollowed-out, heatless buildings and giving birth in inoperative subways. It has always been this way. And yet, it hasn’t.
This is the Christian’s burden. This is humanity’s burden. These people are ours and not ours. People on both sides, that is.
And so my mind churns on auto-pilot when I’m half-asleep, the headlines of news articles coming back to me muddled and with no resolution. I know I must consciously give up the burdens for the night, give up the threat of nuclear warfare for the night, give up those hiding in electricity-less winter for the night. I can have them back tomorrow.
In mid-March I came across a devotional entry written years ago that resonates deeply with this year’s events. I’ve been reading it before bed every night since. I choose to conclude my thoughts nightly with this truth rather than half-baked predictions or false hopes. The truth is brighter than either of those.
I included the phrases I’ve added during prayer, so this looks slightly different from the original:
“‘Therefore a strong people will glorify You; cities of ruthless nations will revere You’ (Isaiah 25:3, NASB). Isaiah sees the day coming when all the nations — representatives from all the people groups — will no longer be at odds with Yahweh, the God of Israel and His Messiah, whom we know to be Jesus.
They will no longer worship Baal or Nebo or Molech or Buddha or utopian social programs or capitalistic growth possibilities or animistic spirits or communism or world leaders or military might or nationalistic glory. Instead they will come in faith to the banquet on God’s mountain.
And they will have the veil of sorrow removed and death shall be swallowed up and the reproach of God’s people will be removed and tears shall be gone forever.
That’s the setting for understanding the vision of Isaiah 25:3. In other words, God is stronger than the “strong peoples” and He is so powerful and so gracious that in the end He will turn ruthless nations to revere him.
So the picture Isaiah gives us is one of all nations turned to God in worship, a great banquet for all the peoples, the removal of all suffering and grief and reproach from the nations, who have become his people, and the final putting away of death forever.
This triumph is sure because God is doing it. Therefore we can be certain of it. Not one life spent in the cause of spreading the gospel is spent in vain. Not one prayer or one dollar or one sermon or one letter of encouragement or one little light shining in some dark place — nothing in the cause of this advancing kingdom is in vain.The triumph is sure.”
I’ll continue reading this night after night until I can say it in my sleep. I don’t know when I’ll stop.