Isaiah brings to Israel the very same word that we saw in Micah 4. It is not that one prophet copied off the other but simply that they both speak for the same God. To a people caught in small-world selfish lifestyles God brings a bigger picture. He reminds his people of who they are called to be. Their selfish lives had led them to a kind of burrow lifestyle in which they effectively buried all the potential that God was giving them to change the world. They were called to be ministers of blessing. Jerusalem was to be a light on a hill to which nations would come. Instead, however, the people were buried in the darkness of the burrows of their selfish lifestyles. God is calling his people out of their burrows here by giving them a renewed vision of what they could be. (Ultimately this is a vision of the new covenant people of God: the church.) God is telling them that, if they continue to run away from their calling, he will give them up to be restless, fearful fugitives. And this is precisely what happens when we run from our calling in God. We face a life of perpetual restless running and hiding; our lives will be determined, not by God’s purposes before us, but by the perceived threats behind us. The remedy to this restless and fearful lifestyle is simple: stop running from God. Turn around. Give yourself over to him. If you do this, then no longer will your life be determined by threats but by divinely given opportunities.
Give yourself over to God afresh today.
Read Isaiah 2
