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Rend The Heavens
written at Saturday, May 22, 2010

Though it's not Christmas, I just thought of blogging about something related to it. Apparently in New Zealand, and many other countries, they happen to have a "Mid-Winter Christmas" which in my opinion is just a holiday for the sake of having one, why have another Christmas in the middle of the year? Anyway, I have basically decided that Christmas was better in my younger days. As a child, it was just so much simpler, the anticipation for nice toys was so much greater. Then again, as I get older, Christmas starts to mean something deeper and more precious.

I don't know about you but I'm not much of a present shaker, the moment I receive a gift, my hands are unable to keep still. When the guests leave, I will proceed to my room and rip the present wrapping to shreds, or to use the antiquated term, “rend,” the wrapping paper off the gift that I had been dying to open.

I'm reading a sermon on-line, the main thrust of it is, "May you give gifts this Christmas season because you have been given the greatest gift." These gifts may not necessarily mean toys or expensive gifts for loved ones, rather they just simply serve as an illustration, a simple illustration of what it means to anticipate and wait for something, or to simply give and have a generous heart (which I struggle with very often) out of remembrance that God has given us Himself as the greatest gift, by which we mimic by sharing it with the ones we love.



Isaiah 64:1 reads, “Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains would tremble before you!” Shortly before Chapter 64, back in Chapter 63, we read some of the writer’s despair, “Look down from heaven and see from your lofty throne, holy and glorious. Where are your zeal and your might? Your tenderness and compassion are withheld from us.”

With such raw emotion seeping from the page, in a desperate cry, Isaiah pens this plead for help from God, “Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!”

In the New Testament, the only gospel in the Bible which picks up this account of Isaiah is from the gospel of Mark. Because it's in Mark that we see the fulfilment and the answer to Isaiah's desperate cry for help. Where? How? What? Throughout the hundreds of years after the time of Isaiah, there has been many false messiahs which had arose (from extra-canonical sources), but what was different about this messiah lying in a manger in Bethlehem?

It’s that some thirty years later after the birth of Jesus, when He undergoes a ritual immersion at the hands of John the Baptist. We see the crying plea of a broken prophet finally answered some 600 years after he begged God to tear open the heavens and come down.

Mark 1:10 reads “As Jesus was coming up out of the water, He saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on Him like a dove.”

This is Him! Isaiah, your God has done it at last! He heard your prayer, and He has torn open the heavens and come down!

Like any just and loving God would do.

“Oh that you would rend the heavens and come down! Come down, show yourself, and fix this place! You say that You are just, You say You love Your people, You say You will fix this! Well, come down and fix it! Please! I beg you, God Almighty, come down and show this world that You mean it!”

“As Jesus was coming up out of the water, He saw heaven being torn open….”

And He did. That’s what the season of Christmas is all about.

He came.

The most amazing and yet mind-boggling thing is that He didn’t come and tear open the skies and come down in an earth shattering awesomeness that only God could do. No, He came down and entered into this mess of a broken and fallen world as one of us. What an awesome and mysterious God we serve.