They will all respond, they will say to you, “You also have become weak, as we are; you have become like us.” – Isaiah 14:10

Today’s Scripture Reading (November 19, 2013): Isaiah 14

There has been a bit of a renaissance in Modern culture in the belief in the undead. The message they seem to want to send is that we need to beware, because zombies walk among us. The recent revival involves a tale of the undead as sometimes being revived through magic or through a mysterious viral infection that has the side effect of reanimating the dead bodies. But often in popular culture, the reanimation is of a very simple person. Zombies stumble their ways through the earth. They are mindless creature with an unquenchable thirst for human flesh. Everything that had once made them an individual has been removed. Often all that seems to be left is a mob mentality, a horror scene for both the living and the undead.

Beyond the zombie revival, the removal of everything that makes us special is the great fear of our time. We often seem to want to go to great lengths to prove our individuality. We do not want to be in the crowd – that is the place of the undead. We desperately want to rise above the crowd, something that our image of the undead can never do.

Isaiah directs his words toward the King of Babylon. At the time of Isaiah, the rise of Babylon was still a longshot, but Isaiah seemed to have a word from God unfolding the uncertainty of the future. So Isaiah believed that Babylon would soon be on the rise. What Isaiah didn’t know was that it would be Nebuchadnezzar II that would be the Ruler in Babylon at the height of the empire. And in the day of Babylon, Israel would try to rebel against the great king of Babylon, but every time Israel would rise up, the great king would put them down. Eventually Nebuchadnezzar would send Judah into exile.

But Isaiah wanted to remind Israel that the day would come when even the great Nebuchadnezzar would die. And when the day would come, the grave would raise up to meet the great king, but at that time he would no longer be great – he would be just like everyone who had died before him. In that day, the king would be weak and unable to change anything. He would have simply joined the crowd.

It might be the one thing that the zombie crowd gets right. The day will come when the grave will rise up to meet each one of us. And in that day everything that we thought was special about us will disappear. All of our accomplishments and awards will be meaningless. The only thing that will matter is whether or not we are in relationship with the God of Israel, the one who created us. Death is the great equalizer. And it is the one gate that we will all have to walk through.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Isaiah 15 & 16