Those who are left in Zion, who remain in Jerusalem, will be called holy, all who are recorded among the living in Jerusalem. – Isaiah 4:3

Today’s Scripture Reading (December 22, 2016): Isaiah 4

Hiroshima and Nagasaki remain images of the recent terrors of war. The events of 9/11 might pull more on our heart strings, but the devastation brought to these two Japanese cities at the close of World War II was complete. And they stand as a reminder that the only nation to use a weapon of mass destruction in war was the United States. Wilfred Burchett, an Australian journalist, was the first foreign correspondent to enter into Hiroshima after the blast. And on his arrival, he wrote these words – “When you arrive in Hiroshima you can look around and for 25 and perhaps 30 square miles you can see hardly a building. It gives you an empty feeling in the stomach to see such man-made devastation.” It is hard to imagine a modern city where nothing stood after the blast of the bomb. No firetrucks or police officers were digging in the remains of the building searching for survivors. There was no putting back together of the bodies of many of the dead. No fear surrounding buildings might fall in the hours and days after the attack, because for 25 square miles around the epicenter, nothing stood. The buildings had already fallen away. All that Wilfred Burchett could see was a mass grave of the dead. The devastation was complete.

Isaiah can’t imagine that kind of devastation. There were no weapons in his day that could produce that kind of an effect. But what he does see is devastation at the highest level of his imagination. Most of the men of the country had died by the sword. Those who had not died had been carried off into exile. Once the city and all those who lived in it, the kings and queens and their royal courts, the people that Isaiah knew and met with on a daily basis, might have been called beautiful. But in the day of the devastation, beautiful would no longer exist. Desperation would take over, and those who were left in the city would only survive because they were people of faith. These would be the people who believed that God still had a plan, even if they couldn’t see it because the rest would have already run away from the city or ended their own lives in great sadness. But a remnant, God’s remnant, would remain.

These men and women would be the desperately poor. They would be weak, struggling to live from day to day. But their faith would allow them to overcome the desperation and devastation. These would not be the beautiful ones. Beauty had long ago left the city. But they would be the holy ones – the ones dependent on God.

As we inch closer to Christmas day, we need to be reminded that the call of Jesus did not originally land on the ears of the beautiful. They were shepherds, keeping watch over their flocks by night. And the glory of the Lord shone around them – and they were made holy.

It is the cry of my heart this Christmas. Lord, don’t make me beautiful. But please, make me holy.  

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Isaiah 5