Like The Dawn

Isaiah 58:6-12

Then your salvation will come like the dawn, and your wounds will quickly heal. . . . Then when you call, the LORD will answer. “Yes, I am here,” he will quickly reply. (Isaiah 58:8-9)

GOD MADE AN EXTRAORDINARY promise to his people. If they would turn from faith in their own religiosity to faith in God’s true nature, he would enter into their lives in powerful ways, healing their wounds and rescuing them from their troubles. Where once their prayers had seemed to bounce off heaven’s walls, they would now win his immediate response. The people’s responsiveness to God’s concerns would make him responsive to theirs.

Why did God set these conditions? Because he wants his people to relate to him as he really is—to connect with him on the issues that matter most to him, to recognize what he is doing, to become his allies in spirit and in purpose. Isaiah wrote to people who had done what most human beings inevitably do. They had turned their relationship with God into false standards of holiness and rituals of performance, focusing their attention on the principles and practices that “make life work.” They dressed up their sins in clothes of penance and piety. They missed the core of their faith and forgot its central truth: that recognizing God’s heart and aligning with it gives us access to him.

Jesus put it another way: Those who clothe themselves in the manner of a servant, with a genuine love for those around them, become great in his Kingdom (Matthew 20:25-28). Those who express the heart of God in meeting real needs tap into the power he designed us to have. Those who have God’s compassion within them will look at others with a heart of compassion and be compelled to act (1 John 3:17). That’s what it looks like to be connected with God, and that’s what prompts him to act. Those who pursue his interests find him zealously pursuing theirs, and answers to their prayers break through like the dawn.

{Father, show me what’s on your heart today. Whose lives do you want to touch? Whose needs do you want to meet? How can I help? Guide me in compassionate directions, and let me experience your compassion toward me. Amen.