Hem of Grandeur
Actor Jimmy Stewart is loved for his extraordinary depth in both career and character. The film Harvey is a Stewart classic and my favorite among his lifework. As Elwood P. Dowd, he roams the town with Harvey, a six-foot tall invisible rabbit. When a psychiatric doctor inquires about the rabbit-friend, Elwood explains that mostly he and Harvey sit in bars and listen to stories. In that classic Stewart voice he says:
[People] tell us about the big terrible things they've done. And the big wonderful things they’ll do. And their hopes, their regrets, their loves, and their hates--all very large--because nobody ever brings anything small into a bar. And then I introduce them to Harvey. And he's bigger and grander than anything they offer me. And when they leave, they leave impressed.
The prophet Isaiah tells of an experience where he encountered the Lord as one far greater than anything he knew before, and when he left, he was not merely impressed, he was overcome with awe. Isaiah writes, "In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne high and lofty, and the hem of his robe filled the temple" (Isaiah 6:1).
Isaiah's encounter with the grandeur of God is particularly interesting in light of the circumstances under which it took place. God appeared to Isaiah during a time of international crisis. The death of good King Uzziah took a king of 52 years off the very throne that brought a divided kingdom back to the life and prosperity it knew under David and Solomon. Isaiah was understandably defeated. It was all in the year of Uzziah's death that Isaiah saw the death of a good and able king, the rise of a wicked and selfish king, and the decline of the kingdom he loved.
Isaiah entered the temple with distress and loss, despair and confusion--all very large. And then, Isaiah says, he saw the Lord, and the very hem of his robe filled the temple. The prophet had come to worship grieving a king and in the midst of his pain had an encounter with a throne of far greater caliber. God's kingship was far bigger and grander than anything he had imagined.
Whatever our circumstances, let us not hide from the one who offers to stand beside us and asks that we cast our cares upon him. “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls” (Matthew 11:28-29). In the awe-inspiring presence of God our worries are put into perspective. As a friend is fond of saying, worship is an encounter with one who is "always bigger than what's the matter." Yet perhaps it is not that our anxieties are in fact smaller than we perceive them, but that the King of Kings is far greater than we have perceived Him. In the words of Isaiah himself, “From ages past no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you” (64:4). And we have yet to see even a hem of the grandeur of his kingship.
Jill Carattini is senior associate writer at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.
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