Isaiah 64:1-9: The Gospel-Not of an Instant-But of a Lifetime

Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains would tremble before you! As when fire sets twigs ablaze and causes water to boil, come down to make your name known to your enemies and cause the nations to quake before you! For when you did awesome things that we did not expect, you came down, and the mountains trembled before you.

Since ancient times no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who acts on behalf of those who wait for him. You come to the help of those who gladly do right, who remember your ways. But when we continued to sin against them, you were angry. How then can we be saved?

All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away. No one calls on your name or strives to lay hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us and have given us over to our sins.

Yet you, Lord, are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand. Do not be angry beyond measure, Lord; do not remember our sins forever. Oh, look on us, we pray, for we are all your people. - Isaiah 64:1-9

Do you know the most unexpected thing? That God might solve the problems with me, not by replacing me but by reshaping me. "For when you did awesome things that we did not expect" God does things that we don't expect, either because he delights in it, because he is smarter than we are or because he finds justice in humbling the proud. 

One act of God I have trouble wrapping my head around: he continues to offer redemption opportunities to even the hardest of hearts and, somehow, he asks us to do the same thing. There are people we know will never change. They have always been like this or that. We continue to live through them being exactly like they have always been. We have to erect barriers in our hearts because they have disappointed us again and again. 

And yet, what is the gospel-the good news-if not expecting that people will change. We know that somehow that person can change and we shouldn't be surprised. Why, after so many failed promises and repeated failures? That's what God asks us to believe...because that's what God did with us. We were changed, however slowly, under the hand of God. We are the disappointment. The lost cause. The subject of rolled eyes and disgusted looks. Yet something new is forming. That is the gospel-not of an instant-but of a lifetime.

"Yet you, Lord, are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand." It requires the undoing-the unmaking-then the shaping. Why are we surprised? It is the lifetime.