Up and Down and Isaiah 26:5-8

He humbles those who dwell on high,

He lays the lofty city low;

He levels it to the ground

and casts it down to the dust.

Feet trample it down—

the feet of the oppressed,

the footsteps of the poor.

The path of the righteous is level;

you, the Upright One, make the way of the righteous smooth.

Yes, Lord, walking in the way of your laws,

we wait for You;

Your name and renown

are the desire of our hearts.

I think the humbling of the exalted and the uplifting of the humbled is important to Isaiah. We have chatted about its meaning previously:

God wants to gather us close to him like a parent picking up his children, or even a farmer picking up soil or seeds or anything else he can hold in the palm of his hand that he loves. Sometimes, as the Lord is picking us up we have a desire to reach heights quicker or greater than He is lifting us at the moment and as a result we try to lift ourselves up; we leap from the Lord’s hands. When we do this, of course, we wind up falling to the ground. We are humbled because we cannot possibly lift ourselves closer to the LORD than God Himself can lift us. If we try, we fall. But when we fall, when we are humbled, when we are fallen, the Lord reaches down again and offers to lift us up closer to Him.

We have all heard the expression, captured in Proverbs 16:18 that pride comes before a fall. It is true. This is some of what Isaiah is speaking about. We have all heard of the ‘unsinkable ship’? Which ship was it that was supposed to be unsinkable? The Titanic. When we exalt ourselves, engage in hubris, sometimes we fall. Sometimes we are just convinced we are right until God and others let us know otherwise. Susan, last week shared about my encounter with a hummingbird. We saw one sitting very still on a branch with his little friend or friends. Susan said, "that’s a hummingbird". I, thinking that it was way too still, said "that is not a hummingbird". Immediately the little bird took to flight and hovered in right front of my face, looking me in the eye almost for a minute straight. It was actually a little intimidating. God and this hummingbird showed me!

When we exalt ourselves, lift ourselves up, it is like leaping from the top of a ladder trying to get higher – inevitably we fall.

The Lord loves us; He will always lift us up when we turn to Him in our times of need. The Lord offers us comfort and strength in the midst of everything in this world. Even when everything is falling down all around us, the Lord has His hand outstretched to lift us up and hold us close to Him in His love.

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