The Lord will be the stability of your times… —Isaiah 33:6

My wife Laura and I are blessed to be taking care of our 4- and 6-year-old granddaughters. We are helping our son, and are with them at least five days a week. We are referred to as Lolli and Poppi. That is, we are Lollipops—‘suckers’ for these little ones.

We are not able to take the typical grandparent role of short visits spoiling the grands. Discipline is necessary to mitigate chaos and justice for those occasional fights that usually begin with the familiar squeal of “Mine!”

So, what does this have to do with Isaiah, God, and us?

Well, there is a lot of discussion in these chapters in which God calls out the world for all the injustices and territorial disputes happening among “sophisticated” adults. Some 56 countries are currently fighting, as of last count. For having been written 2800 years ago, this is a timeless word from God.

Woven within Isaiah’s relatable words are the tensions between trust in worldly power and might or trust in the persistent mercy of a loving God.

We know this familiar Scripture so well—“God so loved the world,”—but forget God does so, not because we are so lovable, but in spite of ourselves. The contrast shows how crazy and supernatural God’s love is. Though the world continues to put trust in things that will disappoint and disappear, Isaiah’s message is clearly focused on a hope that, despite it all, sees that the only thing crazier than this world is God’s crazy love.

No wonder the early Christians had that apt phrase, “Don’t say, ‘Look what the world has come to,’ but rather, ‘Look who has come into our world!’” Trusting in that love is where we find true joy. As the last verse puts it, those who trust in God, “shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.”