Feb 7 - Isaiah 59:1-2

See, the Lord's hand

is not too short to save,

nor his ear too dull to hear.

Rather, your iniquities have been

barriers between you and your God.

Isaiah 59:1-2

I'm a cartoonist at heart. Can't you almost see the silly drawing in pen and ink ... God's hand reaching down from heaven -- straining, stretching, and still ending up six inches too short. "Sorry," cries the voice from the clouds, "I just can't reach."

The prophet says, "No! The Lord's hand is not too short to save."

But that, of course, is not your worry.

You didn't believe that cartoon, anyway. 

Neverthless, I bet you have wondered about the next line. We pray and pray, and situations aren't resolved in the exact time and precise way that we'd like. And so we wonder, "Does God really hear?"  

Isaiah 59 gives the shortest clearest answer to this that I've ever heard. He says, "Friend, it's not God's hearing aid that needs fixed. It's your sinfulness that needs to be fixed. It's your sins that are the barrier between you and God."

God's not the barrier. We are.

Now ... please understand ... it's not just us and our own personal sins that keep us from God and grace. We live in a world shattered by sin. Hurts abound. We don't want to wait for heaven for peace. We want it now. So we pray and pray, and when the answers don't come, we blame God's deafness rather than the world's rebellion.

We can't fix the world.

But ... we can seek to remove the "barriers" that we personally erect between ourselves and God. Pride, anger, doubt, selfishness, and sin. These are just a few of the barriers that keep us from hope, joy, and peace.

In Christ's Love,

a guy who believes that

God has a very long wing span

(and a guy who's ready to quit

using his own wingspan

to keep pushing God away)