We pray….Lord, Rip Open the Heavens and Come!  

Isaiah 64:1-9  Psalm 102:18-22

 † IHS †

 As you grow to know God’s mercy, may you find your prayers sustained by the Spirit’s presence, even as you pray for Christ’s return!

Rip’em open Lord

There are days where Isaiah’s cry I hear with great anger, and other times I hear it with great heartache.  As we look out into this world, with its wars, with it massacres. When we see people causing division, rather than trying to bring reconciliation, when we see people struggle with the political games, with broken relationships, when they get played by extremism, or self-centeredness.  When we look around us, and all we see is sin. There is a frustration that results in anger, and in tears. There is a desperation to our prayers, to connect to God!

Lord, come quickly, come so quickly you rip the sky’s open, and bring it to and end1

Isaiah certainly didn’t mean this as a casual invitation, but it was a cry born of pain, he pleaded with God to not hold back, but to come down with all His power, and set things straight.

To make things the way they are supposed to be.

Why can’t people love God, and love each other?

We can get so frustrated, there are times where we aren’t sure whether to be angry, or crushed.  For that matter, we aren’t even sure which we are, at the moment.

The World Deserves it….

The cries for God to fulfill His promises resound throughout the Old Testament.  For God promises, as he does in our reading tonight, to come with all of the angels and fix it.  To come and destroy all that is Holy, to shake it up the way He did in the Old Testament, to deal with those who do things that are unrighteous.

You see it in all of the prophets, they pray for God to come and fix it all that is broken.

To take care of evil once and for all.

Even as Christ came the first time to save us, we know He is coming back to judge the quick and the dead.  He will reign, He will fix everything, and that will go one forever.

They plead with God to return, they can’t stand living amid the brokenness any longer, so they turn to God and cry for help.  The God the psalmist notes is looking down, listening to the cries of those in bondage, and will come to release them.

We deserve it

Back in Isaiah, even as the prophet cries for God to rip open the heavens, there is a realization, a hesitation.  For Isaiah realizes how much the people of God have wandered away.  He realizes that God isn’t just angry at them, but at us as well.  That our desire to do good, is worthless, that we are dried up by sin,

What is alarming is verse 7,

No one prays to you or makes the effort to reach out to you….

I have to ask, how much is prayer a part of our lives.  Whether it is taking the psalms and praying through them, or whether it is just pouring out our heart to God.  How often do we think of Him, talk to Him, find our selves concerned with what He is concerned with in our lives, in our world?

How often do we follow what He tells us to do?  Or do we justify our sin, not caring if it breaks God’s heart?

We get frustrated by the very thing that in others we want to condemn.   We need to learn to hate this sin, this failure, in our own lives.  We need to  call out to God to cleanse us, heal us, forgive us.

As Isaiah says, we cry for Him to remember we are His people. The people He poured water upon in baptism, the people He feeds and nourishes the souls of during the Lord’s Supper.

We are people that the psalm was recorded for, so that we could praise the Lord with angels and archangels and all the hosts of heaven.

For He has promised to look down and release those for whom Christ died. To free them from their sins…. He promised that to us.

Advent makes Christmas something special, for it takes it from something historical, and we realize that it was to us He came.  Because we needed Him  To save us, and eventually, to return and bring us home to the Father.

Where we will dwell for eternity, in His presence. A day we should long for, even as God gives us His peace, until we return.

AMEN?  AMEN!