The Jesse Tree: Day 16

Advent isn’t just about warm lights and gentle carols. Advent is also about awakening, about God confronting the darkness in us so He can redeem us. And that’s exactly what Isaiah experiences.

Israel had drifted far from God, and Isaiah 1 sounds like a divine intervention nobody wants to attend. God tells His people that their sacrifices are meaningless because their hearts are far from Him. They want the benefits of God without the obedience, the presence of God without the surrender. In Advent language: they want the Christmas morning without the Christ.

And then Isaiah tells us how he was called into his difficult work.

A year when national hope had cracked, Isaiah sees the Real King. The throne that never wobbles. The glory that no temple can contain. The seraphim cry Holy, holy, holy, and suddenly Isaiah sees everything clearly: God in His holiness, and himself in his need.

“Woe is me,” he says, not dramatically, but honestly. Advent does that. It exposes us. It reminds us that the problem isn’t just out there. It’s in here.
 
A seraph flies toward Isaiah with a coal from the altar, the place where sin is covered. Isaiah doesn’t walk to the altar; God brings the altar to him. Grace moves first (as it always does). The burning coal touches Isaiah’s lips, and the seraph declares:

Here is Advent: not our climb to God, but God’s descent to us. Not our offering, but His. Not our atonement, but Christ’s. The coal is a foreshadowing of the coming Child in Isaiah 9, who would purify not just Isaiah’s lips but the whole world through His life, death, and resurrection.

And tucked quietly into Isaiah’s prophecies is the Advent hope we still cling to: A light has dawned. A child has been given. A King is coming who will make all things new.