Holidays often mean homecoming, and homecoming often involves home-going. Travel at Thanksgiving and Christmas always seems to rank among the busiest times of the year.
Something like that is happening in Isaiah 2: the Greatest and Most Glorious Holiday, the Day of the Lord, will bring people from all nations back home to the God of all nations, where they belong.
That homecoming is marked by an attitude that says, “Let’s go where we know we will be welcome; where God will teach us to walk in his ways, and our journey will always be guided by the light of the Lord.”
That’s quite an ambitious desire, a longing to be welcomed into God’s presence, and taken in, and taught and shaped and changed, and end up knowing how to walk in footsteps of Jesus, no matter where you are headed next.
God responds to that homecoming desire by shaping the lives of the people who have come home: tools of war become implements of abundant life.
Come, let us go to the mountain of the Lord: he will teach us, and shape us, and lead us. Come, let him turn your heart of war into an implement of new life. Come, let us go to the mountain!
Isaiah 2:2-5 (ESV)
It shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the house of the LORD shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be lifted up above the hills; and all the nations shall flow to it, and many peoples shall come, and say:
“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.”
For out of Zion shall go forth the law,
and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.
He shall judge between the nations,
and shall decide disputes for many peoples;
and they shall beat their swords into plowshares,
and their spears into pruning hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war anymore.
O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the LORD.
Prayer
Come, Holy Spirit, and shape my heart and mind.
Unless you teach me, I can’t learn your ways;
unless you lead me, I cannot follow your paths.
Judge my heart and condemn my pride;
then turn my thoughts and acts of anger
or violence into tools of your harvest.
Make me an instrument of your peace.
Give me words that plant seeds of life
and gather people in. Come, Holy Spirit,
and teach me to walk in the light of the Lord.
Amen.