“In the night I search for you; in the morning I earnestly seek you. For only when you come to judge the earth will people learn what is right. Your kindness to the wicked does not make them do good. Although others do right, the wicked keep doing wrong and take no notice of the Lord’s majesty. O Lord, they pay no attention to your upraised fist. Show them your eagerness to defend your people. Then they will be ashamed. Let your fire consume your enemies. Lord, you will grant us peace; all we have accomplished is really from you.”
Isaiah 26:9-12 NLT
Morning and night. Special times perhaps for God’s people, and pilgrims like us everywhere. Some nights, lying in bed in that “starting to drift off into sleep” mode, I’m conscious of a feeling of relief after a confusing and chaotic day, and I bring before God my thoughts and emotions, asking Him for His perspective and confessing any sins that I might have committed. This leads to praying for the issues that have emerged over the past few hours, and that’s how the day ends. But Isaiah went further; he earnestly searched for the Lord. That builds a picture of a man who is aware of society’s ills and where God cannot be found at all. We pilgrims perhaps feel the same, as we consider our increasingly secular society, where God has been forgotten, ignored and even vilified. Where our fellow citizens follow their selfish desires as they did in the days of the Judges: “In those days Israel had no king; all the people did whatever seemed right in their own eyes” (Judges 21:25). Their moral compass long gone. Their songs, devoid of praises to God, would instead have the lyrics “What’s in it for me” or “I’ll do it my way”. But Isaiah searched for God while lying on his bed, and I’m sure, in the quiet of the night, he found His Lord.
But on awakening, Isaiah sought God again. Faced with such an arrogant and Godless society, he knew that he needed God to be there with him. He didn’t know what he would face in the day ahead, and perhaps he was even a bit scared about the issues he would have to face. The people around him had forgotten God, as we have read in previous chapters, and were following sinful practices, particularly idolatry, even though they went through the motions of the Jewish rites and rituals. But do we pilgrims feel the same? Do we too wake up and immediately start to think God-thoughts, earnestly seeking Him for whatever resources we need for the day ahead? Are we like the Psalmist David, praying as in Psalm 5:3, “Listen to my voice in the morning, Lord. Each morning I bring my requests to you and wait expectantly”? In a time of great stress, David wrote another prayer: “O God, you are my God; I earnestly search for you. My soul thirsts for you; my whole body longs for you in this parched and weary land where there is no water” (Psalm 63:1). This might be an appropriate prayer for those of us pilgrims who are currently living in drought-filled parts of England. But the land in which we live is indeed parched without the living water of God’s Spirit flowing throughout our societies, our churches and communities.
What requests do we have this morning? And, here’s the thing, do we believe that God can bring answers to our prayers? But I know that some people wake up in the morning, just relieved that they have survived another night, having been racked with pain, or unable to sleep. Others wearily haul themselves out of bed, wishing that they didn’t have to face the day ahead at all. But not Isaiah. He had an eager expectation that God would be there with him. He knew what Solomon had written years before: “Great is his faithfulness; his mercies begin afresh each morning” (Lamentations 3:23).
Jesus always spent time in prayer in the mornings. Mark 1:35, “Before daybreak the next morning, Jesus got up and went out to an isolated place to pray”. Why did He have to do that? Because when He left Heaven, Jesus left behind most of His divine attributes, taking on human form with all the limitations that would follow. So He had to spend time communicating with His Father in Heaven to ensure that He would follow His will in the day ahead. We should do the same because we don’t have a clue about the issues that might appear in the hours ahead. We pray for grace and compassion in our interactions with fellow citizens, God-followers or not. We pray for the words to say when someone needs comforting. We need the leading of the Holy Spirit when God wants us to bring His message of hope into a life devoid of hope at all. And, above all, we need God to fill us afresh with His Spirit, resourcing us for the day ahead. I do not know what I will face today. But I know Someone who does, and I need to hold His hand throughout the day ahead. Thankfully, His hands are big enough to hold each one of us.
Almost despairingly, Isaiah wrote, “For only when you come to judge the earth will people learn what is right”. A statement of truth, but within it there are pockets of hope for those who follow Him day by day, for those who earnestly seek God for His resources and His righteousness. But by Judgment Day, it will be too late for most to understand the difference between right and wrong. For those who have never understood what God truly desires, Fanny Crosby wrote a hymn in 1869 called “Near the Cross”, and the first verse reads, “Jesus, keep me near the cross,/ There a precious fountain; / Free to all, a healing stream,/ Flows from Calv’ry’s mountain”. And the chorus goes: “In the cross, in the cross / Be my glory ever, / Till my ransomed soul shall find / Rest beyond the river”. That’s where we pilgrims need to be, always aware of what Jesus has done for us. Always close to our Master.
Dear Heavenly Father. It all starts with the Cross at Calvary, and Your Son in agony of body and spirit, taking on to Himself the sins of the world. And before You this morning, I declare my gratitude. In this weary and parched land, I pray that once again, You will awaken us with a new move of Your Spirit. Raise up Godly men and women, we pray, who will pray without ceasing for revival to hit Your churches, shifting the people’s gaze far above their leaking church roofs to Your throne. It’s all about You, Lord, and we echo Your prayer for Your Kingdom to come and Your will to be done, in Your precious name. Amen.
