“Look to Me, and be saved, all you ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other.” Isaiah 45: 22, NKJV
Dear God, here we are once more in Your Holy Presence, waiting to catch a glimpse of Your face; to hear a Word from Your lips. In Jesus’ name. Amen
Why do you believe God would ask us to look to Him in order to be saved? Why not look at nature? Doesn’t nature provide us with a fairly accurate picture of God? And how can we look to Him, if at no time men and women can look at God and live? Where do we find the balance? God is perfect, nature is not. Therefore, it is impossible for nature to paint an accurate picture of God. Disasters, the stronger species destroying and/or replacing the weaker ones, parents abandoning, or abusing, even killing, their children, and viceversa, do not adequately represent the God of love that I serve.
In regards to men and women beholding God and living, God made provison for that by sending His Son, “born of a woman.” In His Son, God walked and talked with humanity, ate and drank with human beings, suffered with, and, at the hands of His creatures. He walked in our shoes so that we might get, not a glimpse, but a good look, at the face of God! For “God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself.” God knew that if we saw Him as He really is, we could not help but love and obey Him. He knew that we would want to get to know Him better, “who to know is life eternal!” He knew that, by ”beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, [we] are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.” So the Son agreed to cover His divinity with humanity, and come to earth to show us the face of God!
God’s entrance into the realm of humanity was at a level that the most humble of human beings might take heart. He came at the very lowest level, that He might lift us up to the highest heights. He was born in a manger that we might live in a mansion. How can anyone resist such love? Everything He did was done, that we might “look to [God] and be saved.” He made His entrance with the humble, but departed with the opulent (He was buried in the unused grave of Joseph of Arimathea, one of the wealthiest Jews of His time). Therefore, no one need feel overlooked or left out. He stood at an equidistance of the rich and the poor, of people of all colors, or social standing, men and women, and children; so that everyone could see the face of God from where he or she stood, with no preference shown to any group.
No wonder God, declaring through His prophet, could say: “Look to [M]e and be saved…For I am God and there is no other.” When Jesus came He would conclude: “He that has seen Me has seen the Father….And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all peoples to Myself.”
During this holiday season let us thank God for His unspeakable Gift – His Son, the perfect face of God. Blessings!