AP

Isaiah 21:2-3   A dire vision has been shown to me: The traitor betrays, the looter takes loot.  Elam, attack!  Media, lay siege!  I will bring to an end all the groaning she caused.  At this my body is racked with pain, pangs seize me, like those of a woman in labour; I am staggered by what I hear, I am bewildered by what I see.

I felt convicted when I read this today.  Faithful Isaiah was given a vision of God’s coming judgment on Babylon and the other surrounding nations.

I felt convicted as I reflected on the effect this vision had on him – both physically and mentally/psychologically: “my body is racked with pain, pangs seize me, like those of a woman in labour; I am staggered by what I hear, I am bewildered by what I see.”  I have never experienced ‘labour pains’, but five times I have sat with someone who has (albeit to a relatively mild extent, thanks to the help of a technique called ‘psychoprophylaxis’!), but I gather he wanted to give the impression that his ‘vision’ was really a ‘nightmare’.

I had to ask myself, “How deep is my concern for what will happen to every person who does not know Jesus as Saviour, when he comes back to rule in power?”  As I see where our world is heading as it persists more and more in rejecting God’s grace and mercy in Jesus, I long for his return – “Come, Lord Jesus.  The grace of the Lord Jesus be with God’s people. Amen” (Revelation 22:20-21 – the final words in our Bible!).  But while I rejoice greatly in what it will mean to see my Saviour, and to appreciate more fully what it will mean to me on that Day that he, through his great suffering and horrendous death, will shield me from God’s just wrath against my sin, Isaiah challenges me to feel greater concern for all who refuse to take refuge in him, and so have to face that wrath alone.

Will that concern move me to be more active in sharing the Good News of Jesus with more of my acquaintances and in praying earnestly that the Holy Spirit will move in them to bring them to Jesus in repentance-an-faith?  I certainly hope so, but I will need God’s Holy Spirit to move in me as well for such a change to come about!

– Bruce Christian