Fearing God-Holiness (Mother Teresa and Dirty Robes)

I've been thinking about what it means to fear God. Isaiah 6 is helping my heart to understand the God whom invites me to fear Him, and yesterday I talked a bit about the first attribute of God that we see in the passage, God's Holiness, and how that holiness draws me closer to Him.

But this holiness makes me pause as well. When I really consider it, think about a God who is completely different, wholly other-I am humiliated (in the best idea of the word).

I can't love like He loves. I always will love others because I want something in return. I will always think about my own self-interest in a relationship. I can strive to be like Him, but in the end the best of me doesn't even get close to comparing to His greatness.

The passage illustrates this in verse one. It says that Isaiah sees the Living God on a throne, and the train of His robe is filling up the temple. The temple was the best that Israel had to offer. It's beauty and glory brought people from all over the ancient world to see it. It was the a high point in the history of the people of God-a place where they were the obedient and generous in their constructing God's dwelling place on earth.

And the train of God's robe easily fills it up.

The train of a robe is the lowest part of the garment, and subsequently when you are imagining someone garbed in a robe with a train, the train is the lowest point of that person. Dragging on the ground, getting dusty. See the idea with this image. The "lowest" part of God is so far beyond the best part of Israel that it fills it up, consumes it with His glory.

I think about the best that modern Christianity has to offer and I think about Mother Teresa. I'm having a love affair with her right now. Everything I read about her fascinates and challenges me. She understood what it meant to know Jesus and that deep and real knowledge pressed her to care for the poorest of the world's poor. And still the amazing Mother Teresa comes no where close to the hem of God's glorious robe.

Who are your hero's of faith? Billy Graham? Elizabeth Elliot? Jim Wallis? The best of the best. But when compared to the Best that is God all that we have to offer is consumed by His best-ness.

I can see why Paul said that the best parts of himself, of all of us, are basically crap. Because compared to a HOLY God-well you can't compare anything to a Holy God, there is no comparison.

And that is humiliating. That gives me perspective. That calls me to respect and reverence.

"Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty

and the whole earth is full of His Glory"