A sanctuary of fear and dread

 This week's verses are Isaiah 8:11-15:

For so the Lord spoke to me with mighty power and instructed me not to walk in the way of this people, saying,

“You are not to say, ‘It is a conspiracy!’
Regarding everything that this people call a conspiracy,
And you are not to fear what they fear or be in dread of it.
It is the Lord of armies whom you are to regard as holy.
And He shall be your fear,
And He shall be your dread.
Then He will become a sanctuary;
But to both houses of Israel, He will be a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense,
And a snare and a trap for the inhabitants of Jerusalem.
Many will stumble over them,
Then they will fall and be broken;
They will be snared and caught.”

These verses come just after God has told Isaiah what is going to happen in the world around him. Violent armies will push into their region and destroy their neighbors. Nobody knows where and when they will stop. And now God is telling him not to get caught up in drama and doom-saying like the people in his day are as they begin to see the world changing around them.

Thousands of years later, in our modern times, people still get caught up in drama and doom-scrolling. We watch gossip-driven 24-hour news, or consume algorithm-driven social media, all designed to work us into a frenzy so that we keep watching. And if those "news" sources don't work us up, we can sometimes get caught up with those we love and respect who are affected by it. "Nuclear war is around the corner. Racism is everywhere. The wrong candidate will win. There is corruption in the highest offices of government. The climate is changing and our borders are being overrun."

Isaiah only had to contend with simple old-fashioned gossip. We have to face the combined power of the best psychologists and producers in history, all working day and night to get our attention so that they can entrap us and extract money and political loyalty. And occasionally the things they describe really are as bad as they make them out to be. It's understandable if we are tempted to go along with the crowd and talk politics and worry ourselves to sleep.

But God tells Isaiah not to go along with the fear and dread that plagues the others, and not to spread the gossip everyone else was spreading. To focus on such things is to proclaim a world without God, where the only thing that matters is what we can see and imagine. Is God glorified in our worry? Is he demonstrated as present and sovereign in a world that is centered around us, and our property, and our eventual death?

Our focus in dramatic times should be on the greatness of God. We should worry about staying close with him for eternity rather than what might happen to us now. He is our best hope for sanctuary but he stands in the way of our plans to save ourselves. It's easy to trip up when everyone is running one way or another and God calls us to be still.

So I guess some good questions to meditate on with these verses are:

1. What are you anchored to? If people were in a Y2K panic about something, would you automatically be in a panic over it too?

2. What is your sanctuary? Does worrying and negativity give you a sense of safety and control? Or do you place your ultimate trust in God's ability and desire to care for you now and forever?