God's Reality

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!” -Isaiah 6:3 

When we read Isaiah’s famous vision, we are transported into another realm, the one where God dwells concretely and tangibly. We are seeing something that we long for as much as we fear it, a vision of the awesome and terrifying glory of God. 

We long to see Him fully because like Augustine said, “our hearts are restless until they rest in You;” yet we do not have language or capacity to hold in our eyes the piercing and blinding power of God’s being. We can only fall down in the face of this vision and cry out “woe is me!” This is not an exercise in piety, it is a visceral reaction to God’s otherness, His strangeness and alien-ness. He is so beyond words. In our current situation, we tend to not see God in this way. Maybe this is a mercy, maybe this is a cruelty? For we long to see and touch Him, to have our inner sense of Him fully alive and what is sensed inside becomes fully seen on the outside. Isaiah’s vision dares us to come closer yet also seems so out of reach in the daily slog of life. 

Yet this vision is a balm to the soul, for God is truly like this and He reigns overall. This is actual reality. The drudgery of life distracts us from this. My wife Anna once told me that faith is living in God’s reality. We are connected to the One who is this blinding vision and will always be; our struggles do not change this. We are probably not ready to see Him like this. Yet when God makes Himself known to us (in whatever way He deems best), It lifts us into His reality. God confirms his power and might when we face this world’s cruelty and barbarity. There is a promise that this One with all the might will make all things new. 

Faith grasps God’s hand for dear life, believing that this is true. For if it is not true, there is no justice for the helpless majority of the world’s victims of oppression and tyranny. Life is merely plummeting down a long waterfall while waving hello at the others speeding towards their demise. Human life has no meaning other than to be aware of our hurtling into the abyss. Yet with God, the human story has meaning and purpose. The struggle of good over evil matters because there is a good God working out all things for the good of those who love Him. Our tears become the prayers for this better world where the Crucified God sits on a throne with the wounds we gave Him; repairing all things that have been broken: broken bodies, broken relationships, broken souls. All things repaired by the hands that were themselves broken on the cross.

When the seraphim cry out “Holy!” they are aware of God’s redeeming purpose for all things. They already see fully; they are crying out for us to see too. The church has a long tradition of what is called the beatific vision, of seeing God in His glory revealed in Jesus. Many have reported seeing otherworldly visions and encounters with God. Therefore, we should be open to the possibilities. However, until we are given this grace, we can still see Him in Isaiah 6 and in the Transfiguration accounts. We can tremble with Isaiah or the disciples on the mountain. We can cry out “Holy!” and hold on to the reality that God really and truly reigns, regardless of what evils we see currently.