15 December 2025

‘O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence …’ prays the prophet, Isaiah.(Isaiah 64;1)  And the flooded plains and the famine stricken lands would be no more. And peace reign in Ukraine, Gaza, the Sudan ….

‘O that you would tear open the heavens and come down …’ is our Advent cry for help, our longing for the coming of the Son of God. But will our prayer be answered this Advent? Was it answered last Advent? Was it answered when the lament was first delivered in the days of the prophet?

There are two problems with this prayer. Firstly, to whom would God respond? If you were the one who cried, ‘O that you would tear open the heavens and come down ..’ would God respond to you over against another worshipper with the same prayer?

Secondly, would your cause be justified? Would you have right on your side? What sort of God would make immediate response to your prayer? A puppet on a string? Or the God of the fanatical face of indiscriminate violence, brutality and terror?

Is that the kind of God who would tear open the heavens and come down to sort everyone out? It is not my God nor the prophet’s. For in a subsequent verse, he acknowledges that this prayer has not been answered for a long time – if it ever was!

‘From ages past no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen God besides you, who works for those who wait on him.’ It is in the waiting that God’s promise is fulfilled. Far from waiting for God to tear open the heavens, God comes down and ‘works for those who wait for him’. (Isaiah 64;4)

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