Christmas in Isaiah — Isaiah 9:1–7

When people think of Christmas in the Bible, they almost always turn to the opening chapters of Matthew and Luke. Those pages glow with angels and shepherds, a manger, songs in the night, and the birth of a child who changes the world. But long before Mary ever traveled to Bethlehem, long before shepherds heard a song in the sky, Christmas had already been announced—right in the book of Isaiah.

Isaiah spoke into a moment filled with fear and darkness. The northern tribes—Zebulun, Naphtali, and the region around the Sea of Galilee—were crushed by the Assyrians. Their land, once filled with promise, became what Isaiah calls a place of “gloom” and “anguish.” The world Isaiah lived in was a world where people knew darkness not just as a metaphor, but as a daily reality. And into that bleak landscape Isaiah dares to speak a word of astonishing hope.

He begins Isaiah 9 with a promise of reversal:
“But there will be no gloom for her who was in anguish” (Isa 9:1).
The very places that first felt the boots of invading armies will be the first places to see a new dawn. Grace goes first where the darkness was deepest.

Then Isaiah announces the heart of the Christmas message:
“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light;
those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shone.” (Isa 9:2)

He’s describing something God does—not something people achieve. The light shines on them, not from them. It’s the language of rescue. And the Gospel writers notice this.

When Jesus begins His public ministry, Matthew tells us something remarkable. As Jesus leaves Nazareth and settles in Capernaum—on the very edge of the ancient lands of Zebulun and Naphtali—Matthew pauses his story and says:

“This was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah:
‘The people dwelling in darkness have seen a great light…’” (Matthew 4:14–16)

Matthew is deliberately pointing us back to Isaiah 9. Jesus stands in the dust of the very same towns Isaiah once named. It is as if the prophecy waited centuries for His feet to touch that soil. The Light dawns exactly where God said it would.

Isaiah continues the vision with images of joy and redemption—joy like harvest, joy like the relief of winning a battle you were sure you would lose. Then he describes the breaking of oppression: the yoke, the rod, the staff of the enemy. These are Exodus images—God freeing His people once again.

But then comes the surprise. The entire movement of this passage turns on one tiny hinge:

“For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given” (Isa 9:6).

In Hebrew thinking, a “child born” makes them look forward to someone, a king perhaps, who will lead them to victory...

A “son given” - hmmm- must have sounded pretty strange 700 years before Jesus.....

Together they form the mystery the New Testament unwraps: fully human, fully divine.

Isaiah piles title upon title to show what this child will become:

• Wonderful Counselor – wisdom beyond human kings

• Mighty God – unmistakable deity

• Everlasting Father – eternal protector and provider

• Prince of Peace – the One who ends the long war of sin

And then Isaiah says something breathtaking:

“Of the increase of His government and of peace there will be no end… He will sit on the throne of David… from this time forth and forevermore.” (Isa 9:7)

This is the verse Gabriel echoes when he speaks to Mary. In Luke 1, the angel says:

“He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High.
And the Lord God will give to Him the throne of His father David,
and He will reign over the house of Jacob forever,
and of His kingdom there will be no end.” (Luke 1:32–33)

Gabriel is essentially quoting Isaiah 9:7 to define who Mary’s child truly is.
The Child in the manger is the King Isaiah saw.

And when Jesus is born, Luke describes the shepherds hearing a cosmic announcement:
“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom He is pleased.” (Luke 2:14)

Peace… not as a vague feeling or a political dream, but the very thing Isaiah promised the Prince of Peace would bring.

The Gospel of John also seems to have Isaiah 9 in mind when he writes his opening words:
“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” (John 1:5)

John gives us the theological summary: the Child’s coming is the invasion of God’s light into a world that cannot stop Him.

So when we read Isaiah 9 at Christmas, we are reading the script the Gospels were built on. Isaiah gives us the shape of the story long before it arrives: a people in the dark, a world in turmoil, a hopeless landscape suddenly interrupted by a Child who is both God and man, both King and Savior.

At the end of the passage Isaiah says, almost as a whisper to calm our fears:
“The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.”
Not human power. Not good intentions. Not religious effort.
Christmas happens because God’s passion for His people makes it happen.

After we sit in Isaiah 9 for a while, the rest of Isaiah’s Christmas themes come alive with deeper meaning—Isaiah 7’s Immanuel sign, Isaiah 11’s shoot from the stump of Jesse, Isaiah 40’s comfort, Isaiah 53’s sorrow, Isaiah 60’s light, Isaiah 63’s judgment, and Isaiah 25’s feast. These are the windows that surround the great centerpiece of Isaiah 9.

But for this post and early Christmas meditations, our focus is simple:

Christmas in Isaiah is the dawning of God’s light in the world’s deepest darkness, fulfilled in the coming of Jesus Christ, the Child who is also the King whose kingdom will never end.

There is one phrase at the end of Isaiah 9 that I confess I often rush past, even though it may be the most important Christmas promise of all. After describing the Child, the King, the Light, the unending peace, Isaiah ends with this simple declaration:

“The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.” (Isaiah 9:7)

Not might do this.
Not help this happen.
Not cooperate with our efforts to bring it about.
No—the zeal of the Lord will do it.

That word zeal carries the picture of heat, passion, intensity—almost the image of someone flushed in the face because they care so deeply and act so decisively. It is God’s fierce determination to save, to redeem, to finish what He begins, to keep His promises no matter what stands in the way.

And I’ll be honest: that is a quality I often lack, especially this time of year.

The holidays expose how tired we can become. The cold months, the shorter days, the busy schedules, the emotional weight of memories—good and bad—they all drain the inner fire. I can move through December dutifully but not zealously. I can prepare lessons, attend events, go through traditions, yet quietly feel the pilot light burning low. If Isaiah had ended this great prophecy by saying, “And now you must keep up your zeal,” I would have no hope at all.

But he doesn’t.

He says God’s zeal is the engine of Christmas.
God’s zeal brings the Child.
God’s zeal brings the kingdom.
God’s zeal breaks the darkness.
God’s zeal sustains the weary.
God’s zeal accomplishes what our hearts cannot.

That gives me comfort, because zeal is often the missing ingredient in my own holiday season. I can be faithful; I can be reflective; I can be grateful—but the heat, the passion, the “red-faced energy” Isaiah describes feels beyond me.

And that’s the point.

Christmas is not asking me to manufacture zeal.
Christmas is declaring that the Lord’s zeal carries me when mine falters.

It’s His passion that lights the darkness.
It’s His determination that brings peace.
It’s His fierce love that keeps promises I forget.

So when I read Isaiah 9 this year, I find myself not only celebrating the Child who came, but resting in the God whose zeal made it certain. The God who burns with love for His people even when their hearts burn low. The God who finishes what He promises. The God who brings light into darkness—ours included.

“The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.”
And that is very good news for tired hearts at Christmas.

As we move into December... take time to reflect on these things.

Of course I have also offered an album of Christmas songs to lift you up as well-

Album: Christmas Sorrow, Joy, and Hope

__________

'Christmas in Isaiah' Devotionals

As we enter December, I wanted to share some devotionals that explores the theme of ‘Christmas in Isaiah’ These are very informal and typical of my blog…. full of flaws and awkward rambling at times.

Not all of these devotionals are ‘candy canes and cocoa’- there are some pretty challenging and hard things about Christmas. This world is a violent and cruel place. Sin has really sad consequences.

May we all stay ‘child-like’ as we contemplate the mystery of “The WORD became flesh and dwelt among us”.

If these end up blessing you- I'd love to hear from you- jayopsis@gmail.com

The Comfort of Christmas

https://www.jayopsis.com/2015/12/christmas-in-isaiah-comfort-of-christmas.html

The Only Government with Hope

https://www.jayopsis.com/2015/12/the-only-government-and-only-hope.html

The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Christmas

https://www.jayopsis.com/2015/12/the-terrible-horrible-no-good-very-bad.html

Christmas Green

https://www.jayopsis.com/2015/12/christmas-green-christmas-in-isaiah.html

Christmas Red

https://www.jayopsis.com/2015/12/christmas-red-christmas-in-isaiah.html

Why Christmas Includes Sorrow

https://www.jayopsis.com/2018/12/why-christmas-includes-sorrow.html

A Christmas Feast Worth the Wait

https://www.jayopsis.com/2015/12/christmas-in-isaiah-feast-worth-wait.html

3/4 Empty — Cold Coffee, Cold Days

Quick link to the Updated song is here:

Three-Quarters Empty

There’s something about the start of winter that always nudges me inward. The days shrink. The shadows show up earlier. The sun feels like it’s slipping out the side door before I’ve even settled into the late afternoon. It’s the natural season for darker moods, and I’ve found myself circling back to an old poem that has, over the years, grown into a symbol of my life far more today than when I first scratched it out in the late 1980s.

Back then, the poem was mostly an idea—an image that felt clever enough to capture the way unfinished plans clutter the corners of a life. But now, decades later, it’s less metaphor and more memoir.

I’m a coffee drinker. Always have been. Black.

And just as I rarely finish a full cup before it cools and loses its charm, I’ve accumulated bone piles of unfinished proposals, dreams, and half-hearted plans that still float around in my peripheral vision. They’re not regrets, exactly—more like reminders of who I thought I might be on a more energetic day.

Even my coffee cups have upgraded over the years. Stainless steel now, the kind that promises to keep the heat longer. But even then, almost every afternoon, I find a quarter-filled cup of cold coffee on my desk. I reheat it. I ignore it. Then I discover it again, sitting mute and judgmental. I have quite a few handwritten versions of this poem scattered through notebooks, folders, Bible margins, and boxes in my closet—each one a quiet witness to this longstanding habit of leaving things both begun and unfinished.

Poetry isn’t exactly fashionable these days, but this small project—this recurring oracle of lukewarm caffeine—has followed me across decades. And hidden in it are all sorts of hints about my authentic disposition. As I like to say, “he who has ears…”

As always, I’m thankful for my readers—especially those who wander with me into these introspective corners. Here was the original poem- the early versions were 1982 and this final one was probably 1994

Quarter-Filled Cups of Coffee

“I have measured my life in coffee spoons.” — Prufrock
“A hideous throng rush out forever, / And laugh—but smile no more.” — Poe
“Vanity of vanities! All is vanity.” — Ecclesiastes 1:2–3

Quarter-filled cups of coffee,
Shadowed stains beneath the rim.

Cooled liquid, thick and grim,
Etched foam, a mark of whim.

Signs of progress, fleeting, frail,
Concrete traces of time's trail.

Piles of paper, crumpled, torn,
Calendars of dreams forlorn.

What reward for hours spent?
Riches, honor—are they lent?

What state does watched time make?
Unused potential, dreams opaque.

Three-quarters empty cups of coffee,
Symbols of ambition, incomplete.

Epochs wasted on early schemes,
Laps too short, unfulfilled dreams.

Unrequited desire’s depth,
Anger hidden, scarcely left.

Action churning, perception's pile,
Steps uncloser to the next mile.

Will minutes always drag on slow?
What price for the effort we sow?

When activity feels profane,
Success a mere shade of gray.

The trap is set, inescapable,
Suction stronger than will’s appeal.

No one to loose or to care,
Effort fractioned, moments rare.

Dreams remain marathons away,
No tunnel light, no guiding ray.

Only a wasteland of idealistic dreams,
Naive ambitions and their silent screams.

I laugh at myself—such a fool,
Caught in the mirage of my own rule.

The Poem Becomes a Song — Cold Coffee

I started working old poems into song lyrics and "Cold Coffee" came from that- but I wasn't really happy with it. The genre didn't fit my feelings and the word choices I used were too obtuse....

Here is Cold Coffee, the song that grew from the poem:

Verse 1
Quarter-filled cups of coffee,
Shadowed stains beneath the rim.
Cooled liquid, thick and grim,
Foam that fades on a careless whim.

Chorus
Signs of progress, fleeting, frail,
Time's trail etched, like a worn-out tale.
Piles of paper, dreams torn apart,
The weight of hours, heavy on my heart.

Verse 2
What reward for hours spent?
Riches, honor—just fragments lent?
Watched time fades, potential lost,
Dreams turned opaque, at such a cost.

Chorus
Three-quarters empty, ambitions incomplete,
Symbols of plans we can't defeat.
Epochs wasted, schemes so small,
Unfulfilled dreams—they stand too tall.

Bridge
Unrequited desire’s depth,
Anger buried, no passion left.
Actions churn, but stay so still,
The road ahead bends against my will.

Verse 3
Will minutes always drag on slow?
What's the price for the seeds we sow?
When success fades to a shade of gray,
The trap of life won't go away.

Chorus
Three-quarters empty, ambitions incomplete,
Symbols of plans we can't defeat.
Epochs wasted, schemes so small,
Unfulfilled dreams—they stand too tall.

Outro
I laugh at myself, such a fool,
Caught in the mirage of my own rule.
A wasteland of naive dreams,
Silent ambition, stifled screams.

So I worked on it this past weekend and like this version much better- it captures the intent and the work choices feel better to me....

Revised — Three-quarters Empty

Verse 1

Quarter-filled cups of coffee,

Ring-stains bleeding through the grain.

Cold as all the half-formed thoughts

That gather in my brain.

Foam collapses into nothing—

Like the hours I try to save.

Little deaths of small ambitions

Settling in their grave.

Chorus

Three-quarters empty, running thin,

A slow decay I’m living in.

Piles of paper, fractured art—

The weight of hours on my heart.

Every purpose torn apart—

Three-quarters empty, from the start.

Verse 2

Tell me what these days are worth—

A fading echo in the dirt?

Honor, riches—names that slip

Like shadows falling from my grip.

Dreams turn colorless and brittle,

Cracking under quiet doubt.

Something once alive and green

Coldly burning out.

Chorus

Three-quarters empty, running thin,

A slow decay I’m living in.

Piles of paper, fractured art—

The weight of hours on my heart.

Every purpose torn apart—

Three-quarters empty, from the start.

Bridge

There’s a hunger in the silence,

Something restless, sharp, and still.

Every step feels like surrender,

Every choice a smaller will.

And the road ahead is crooked—

Bent in ways I never planned.

I keep walking, though I’m sinking,

Ash and mud in both my hands.

Verse 3

Do minutes always crawl like this?

What’s the price for what I’ve missed?

Every victory fades to gray,

A dull confession, day by day.

I laugh to mask the quiet panic—

A hollow sound I barely trust.

A kingdom built on hopeful sketches,

Crumbled down to dust.

Chorus

Three-quarters empty, running thin,

A slow decay I’m living in.

Piles of paper, fractured art—

The weight of hours on my heart.

Every purpose torn apart—

Three-quarters empty, from the start.

So here it is- maybe I'm finished with it...... for now LOL

Hindsight is 20/20: The Mystery and Tension of Isaiah 53

I’m getting ready for another lesson in Isaiah, and this week we enter one of the most mysterious and powerful passages in all of Scripture—Isaiah 53. When we read this chapter in 2025, it feels almost like reading a biography of Jesus written in poetic form. Every verse seems to unfold the life, death, resurrection, and atoning work of Christ with uncanny clarity. But Isaiah wrote these words roughly seven hundred years before Jesus walked the earth, long before crucifixion was a known form of execution, long before “Messiah” meant anything other than a victorious king. What seems obvious to us would have been beyond bewildering to its first readers.

The original audience faced a set of complications that made Isaiah 53 anything but straightforward. The servant portrayed in the passage is righteous yet rejected, gentle yet crushed, innocent yet treated as guilty. He suffers, but not for his own wrongdoing—he somehow suffers for the sins of others. That idea alone would have strained the imagination. A person bearing the iniquity of the people? That was the work of animals on the Day of Atonement, not the calling of a human being.

The servant also dies, which presents another puzzle. How could a dead servant “see his offspring” or “prolong his days”? How does a crushed, pierced, despised figure end up victorious and exalted? No prophet, no king, no historical figure in Israel’s memory quite fits these contours. The passage is too personal to be about the nation, too righteous to be about an ordinary prophet, too suffering to be about a triumphant king. It existed as a riddle waiting for a key that had not yet arrived. It lived in the dark.

Reading it now, after the cross and resurrection, the key seems obvious. But that’s part of the phenomenon we experience again and again in life and faith: clarity often comes only after the moment has passed. We walk through shadows before we recognize what the light was trying to reveal.

Human experience is full of these “Isaiah 53 moments,” where we stand in the middle of something we cannot decipher. Later—sometimes years later—the fog lifts and we finally see what was actually happening. Hindsight can feel like an unveiling. The parent we resented becomes the parent we admire once we ourselves grow older. The suffering we begged God to remove turns out to have formed something within us we desperately needed. The closed door that felt like rejection becomes the very thing God used to redirect our lives. When we revisit old journals, photographs, or memories, we often find a trail of God’s fingerprints that were invisible at the time.

Psychologists call this hindsight bias or schema blindness, but Scripture edges us even deeper. It whispers that God intentionally works through this “dark-to-light” rhythm. Abraham traveled without knowing the destination. Joseph sat in prison without understanding the purpose. Israel stumbled through exile wondering if God had forgotten His promise. Even the disciples walked beside Jesus Himself and still could not see who He was until after the resurrection. Only then, Luke says, “their eyes were opened” and “they remembered” what He had said. Revelation rarely arrives all at once. It dawns gradually.

Isaiah 53 is a reminder that God often plants clarity in the future and asks us to walk toward it in trust. What was once obscure becomes luminous. What once felt like contradiction becomes coherence. What once looked like defeat reveals itself as redemption.

When we study this passage now, we are standing in the privileged position of looking backward from the resurrection. The Servant is not an enigma. He has a name, a face, a story, and scars. But remembering what the first readers could not see invites us into humility. It reminds us that we, too, are walking through passages of our own lives that will only make sense later. We also interpret our circumstances through limited light. We also fail to see the patterns God is weaving through setbacks and grief, through long waits and unanswered questions.

Isaiah 53 is not just a prophecy fulfilled; it is a pattern revealed. It teaches us that understanding is often delayed, but never denied. It invites us to trust the God who brings light after darkness, meaning after confusion, resurrection after burial.

Isaiah 53 has been a doorway into faith for countless people across centuries. The Ethiopian official in Acts 8 heard it once and immediately asked to be baptized. Early Jewish believers said this chapter shattered their expectations of the Messiah and revealed the suffering Savior they had missed. Skeptics studying Christianity have admitted that the precision of Isaiah’s descriptions—piercing, silence before accusers, a grave with the rich, and life after death—undermined their disbelief. Even today, ordinary men and women read it without knowing its origin and assume it must come from the New Testament; when they discover it was written seven hundred years before Jesus, something clicks. Isaiah 53 has a way of pulling back the curtain, revealing a Redeemer whose story was written long before His birth, and whose presence becomes unavoidable once you see Him in these ancient lines.

And perhaps, as we enter this chapter again, the question is not simply “How did Israel miss this?” but “Where am I living in the dark right now, and what might God one day show me that I cannot yet see?”

________

Let's explore this concept of 'schema blindness' a little more- I think it can be a clue to breaking out of echo chambers and an added tool of epistemology:

schema blindness—the inability to notice information that contradicts what we already believe. It sounds dramatic, but it’s a quiet and everyday reality, shaping everything from how we read a news article to how we interpret the behavior of a friend. Schema blindness is not stupidity or stubbornness. It is simply the way the human mind organizes the world.

A schema is the mental framework we use to make sense of things. It’s a pattern, a shortcut, a kind of map for interpreting reality. Without schemas, the world would overwhelm us. They help us recognize a door as a door, a threat as a threat, a friend as a friend. But the same mechanism that helps us process life efficiently can also make us blind. When something contradicts our internal framework, our attention slides right past it. We literally don’t see what we don’t expect.

One of the most famous demonstrations of this is the “Invisible Gorilla Test,” where participants are asked to count how many times players pass a basketball. In the middle of the scene, a person in a gorilla suit walks into the group, beats his chest, and walks out. Half the viewers never notice the gorilla at all. Their schema—“this is a counting task”—blinded them to everything that didn’t fit.

We tend to think of perception as simply receiving data, but perception is actually interpretation. The mind isn’t a camera; it’s a curator. It pre-screens the world before consciousness even has a chance to weigh in. Because of that, we often miss the unexpected, the unusual, or the inconvenient. Our brains rush to defend the framework we already have.

This doesn’t only happen in psych experiments. It happens in business meetings, in families, in politics, in science, and even in our own personal introspection. People see what the paradigm allows them to see.

A classic example comes from corporate disasters. Before the Challenger shuttle exploded, engineers had data showing the danger posed by low temperatures to the O-rings. But because no catastrophe had happened before, and because the organizational mindset was oriented around schedule pressure and successful launches, the anomalies were minimized. They didn’t fit the schema, so they were not treated as urgent. When groups build dashboards, reports, and routines around the “important” things, the unexpected almost always falls outside the frame.

A similar thing happens in interpersonal relationships. A parent who believes their child is “the responsible one” may overlook warning signs of stress or unraveling. A spouse convinced of another’s unshakeable strength might miss quiet indicators of depression. When your schema says, “This person is fine,” your perception filters out anything that suggests otherwise. Sometimes the people closest to us leave clues in plain sight, but we are too locked into our frameworks to notice.

Even at the level of self-understanding, schema blindness plays a role. We all have narratives about who we are: “I’m the strong one,” “I’m the fixer,” “I’m the calm one,” “I’m the overlooked one,” “I’m the victim,” “I’m the achiever.” These identities become lenses. Evidence that supports them is absorbed effortlessly. Evidence that contradicts them bounces off. Many of us only recognize these blind spots after a moment of shock or failure breaks the framework open.

Schema blindness isn’t always a problem; often it is simply the cost of navigating life efficiently. But becoming aware of it can make us more humble, more curious, and more open to surprise. When we realize how much of our perception is shaped by expectation, we become slower to assume, quicker to listen, and more willing to question our first impressions.

There’s a kind of quiet discipline in learning to pause and ask, “What might I be missing simply because it doesn’t fit my mental map?” It’s a posture of openness to the unexpected contours of reality. Sometimes the most important truths are the ones we don’t have a category for yet. And sometimes the gorilla is right in the middle of the room, beating its chest, waiting for us to finally look up.

Teaching Isaiah and Wrestling with Wrath

I have 3 weeks in my class in Isaiah, and these final few lessons are never easy.

These chapters aren’t light.
They aren’t comfortable.
They press into the hardest realities of Scripture: sin, bloodshed, wrath, justice, and the costliness of redemption.

I knew this section was coming when I laid out the series, but now that I’m here — sitting day after day with Isaiah 63 and Isaiah 53 — I feel the weight of it. I feel the ache. And I’m asking for prayer as I navigate these waters.

Because Isaiah won’t let us look away from the disturbing parts of the human condition.
He forces us to acknowledge what we often avoid: the universal problem of sin and the unavoidable need for atonement.

The Movie Experience That Still Haunts Me

I've been thinking a lot about Mel Gibson's film-  The Passion of the Christ.

When it first came out, I didn’t want to see it. A friend who went early on told me something that stuck with me:

I asked him, “Were people buying popcorn?”
He said, “They were buying it… but they weren’t eating it.”

That told me everything.

My wife and I eventually went near the end of the run.
The theater was nearly empty: a couple in the front row, one man alone in the back.
It was solemn.

As the film unfolded — as I watched the suffering servant bruised, beaten, and crushed — I wept in a way I’ve never experienced in a theater. For the first time, the prophetic imagery wasn’t abstract. It wasn’t academic. It was flesh and blood, pain and silence, wrath and love converging on a single figure.

That memory is with me now as I approach Isaiah again.

Isaiah 63 — The Winepress of Wrath

Isaiah 63 is among the most jarring passages in the Bible.

“Who is this… with garments stained crimson?”
“I have trodden the winepress alone… their lifeblood spattered on my garments.”
— Isaiah 63:1–3

It is violent.
It is unsettling.
It is meant to be.

This is what sin deserves.
This is how holy God responds to deep, unrepentant evil.
It is not overreach. It is not temper. It is justice.

Isaiah is answering a question that began in the opening chapters of Scripture.

The First Cry for Justice — Genesis 4

When Cain kills Abel, God confronts him with these words:

“The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground.”
— Genesis 4:10

Blood doesn’t disappear.
Blood speaks.
It testifies.
It demands an answer.

And Isaiah 63 is God saying:
“I have heard that cry — all of them — and I will answer.”

This thread runs through the entire biblical story, through every age, through every nation, through every tragedy. Every drop of human blood spilled in violence cries out for truth and reckoning.

It’s no wonder John Steinbeck borrowed Isaiah’s imagery for The Grapes of Wrath.
He saw suffering — widespread, grinding, unjust — and instinctively reached for the ancient metaphor of the winepress.

When the poor are crushed long enough, their suffering becomes a cry for righteousness.
When evil is ignored long enough, the world groans for judgment.

Isaiah gives language to that groaning.

Isaiah’s imagery shaped also America again through the Battle Hymn of the Republic:

“He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored…”

Julia Ward Howe understood that God cannot and will not overlook deep injustice.
History bends toward judgment because God bends toward justice.

All of this makes Isaiah 63 hard to teach.
Because teaching it honestly means acknowledging the horror of sin and the horror of judgment — both the ones we commit and the ones we endure.

Isaiah 53 — The One Who Is Crushed

But then Isaiah turns.
The same prophet who gives us the winepress of wrath gives us the suffering servant who steps into it.

“He was pierced for our transgressions;
He was crushed for our iniquities…”
— Isaiah 53:5

The terrifying part is that Isaiah 63 shows what the world deserves.
The astonishing part is that Isaiah 53 shows who bears it.

The Warrior becomes the Lamb.
The Judge becomes the Substitute.
The One who treads the winepress becomes the One who is crushed in it.

I don’t know a way to teach that lightly.
And I’m not sure I’m meant to.

The Final Pressing

The imagery doesn’t diminish in the New Testament:

“The winepress was trodden… and blood flowed…”
— Revelation 14:20

This is the end of the story of sin:
not ignored,
not minimized,
but fully dealt with.

And this is precisely why the cross matters — because it stands between us and this final reckoning.

I keep returning to these words:

“Whoever believes in Him is not condemned,
but whoever does not believe is condemned already…”
— John 3:18

The problem is not hypothetical.
Condemnation is real.
Wrath is real.
Judgment is real.

But so is deliverance.
So is mercy.
So is substitution.

This is the tension I feel while preparing to teach.

Paul says:

“Never avenge yourselves…
Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.”
— Romans 12:19

One of the most important voices in the modern conversation about forgiveness and justice is Miroslav Volf, a Yale theologian who grew up in war-torn Croatia during the Balkan conflicts. Volf is not theorizing about evil from the safety of an armchair — he watched neighbors murdered, communities destroyed, families uprooted, and entire regions descend into cycles of revenge.

His reflections on violence, judgment, and forgiveness have become foundational for Christian thinking on justice, and they speak directly into the world of Isaiah 63, Isaiah 53, Romans 12, and the problem of sin.

Volf’s argument can be stated simply:

If there is no divine judgment, there can be no human forgiveness.

And he says it without flinching.

In Exclusion and Embrace, Volf writes this now-famous line:

“My thesis that the practice of nonviolence requires a belief in divine vengeance will be unpopular with many…

…the only means of prohibiting all recourse to violence by ourselves
is to insist that violence is legitimate only when it comes from God.”
— Exclusion and Embrace, p. 302 (emphasis added)

Then he adds the devastating logic beneath it:

“If God were not angry at injustice and deception
and did not make the final end to violence,
that God would not be worthy of worship.”
— Exclusion and Embrace, p. 304

This is the opposite of what many assume today.

We often think:

Belief in divine judgment makes people harsh and violent.

But Volf argues the truth is the reverse:

Belief in divine judgment is the only thing that keeps people from becoming violent.

Wrath is not the contradiction of grace.
Wrath is the foundation of forgiveness.

So here I am:
Sitting with Isaiah 63 and Isaiah 53.
Sitting with the winepress and the suffering servant.
Sitting with Genesis and Revelation and John and Romans.
Sitting with the universal human tragedy of violence and sin.
Sitting with my own tears in that movie theater years ago.

And I feel the weight.

I want to teach truthfully — not minimizing sin, not sensationalizing judgment.
I want to handle the wrath of God in a way that is biblically honest and pastorally careful.
I want to show the depth of the bad news so the good news can be understood — not rushed, not cheapened, not softened.

But I also want the people I teach to walk away with hope.
With clarity.
With gratitude.
With worship.

And so I’m asking for prayer.
Pray that I will navigate these chapters with humility and love.
Pray that people will not recoil from the hard passages but see the purpose behind them.
Pray that somewhere in the struggle, God will meet us — in His justice, in His mercy, in His truth.

I’m wrestling.
And I’m asking the Lord to make something beautiful out of it.

The North Wind's Working On Me Again

 

a dark nights journal- right after daylight savings time ends... I got way too cold today... shivering deep in my bones.

North Wind

The wind is coming out of the north.
I haven’t felt its bite in quite some time.
I’ll shiver all night,
and in a few weeks,
this won’t even be cold.

Goodbye to the sun—
you and I aren’t on the same agenda.
By the time I settle down
from drudgery and distraction,
there’s only deep dark thought.
I think I’m ready for bed,
and it’s not even 8:30.

They call it seasonal depression—
not an emergency,
but maybe more than the blues.
It’s that “melancholy fit” that Keats said
“falls sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,”
fostering the droop-headed flowers
and hiding the green hills in an April shroud.

Maybe that’s what this is—
a kind of fostering,
not a failing.

Blake once warned that
“Joy and woe are woven fine,
a clothing for the soul divine,”
and I think he was right.
I feel the threads pulling now—
the tug of sadness,
the weave of grace.

Wordsworth murmurs through the fading light,
“Though nothing can bring back the hour
of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower,
we will grieve not, rather find
strength in what remains behind.”

As I looked through poems on the winter I came across an amazing poem-

In Blackwater Woods

by Mary Oliver

Look, the trees

are turning
their own bodies
into pillars
of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,

the long tapers

of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders
of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is
nameless now.

Every year

everything
I have ever learned
in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side
is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.

To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

Keats again reminds me,

“A thing of beauty is a joy for ever;
its loveliness increases,
it will never pass into nothingness.”
Even the fading light
is still some kind of beauty.

The poets say to embrace it—
that it is necessary.
So here I am,
listening to their advice,
writing a song about letting the north wind do its work.

Song: North Wind

Verse 1

The north wind is here, I feel it’s bite
Been a long time and will shiver all night
Cold in my bones but I know before long,
This chill will fade, and I’ll call it strong.

Goodbye to the sun, you’re leaving too soon,
You fall from the sky before the moon.
By the time I slow from the day’s charade,
It’s dark inside, and the light has strayed.

Chorus 

They call it the shadow season,
But maybe it’s a quiet reason.
To love what fades, to let it go,
To trust what only endings know.
Beauty stays beyond the sin—
The north wind’s working on me again.

Verse 2

Joy and sorrow, threads entwined,
A woven robe for the soul’s design.
I feel those pulls in the evening’s grace,
The tender tears the heart must face.

There’s strength to find in what remains,
A flicker of hope beneath the chains.
The light may fade, but it doesn’t die,
It hides in the hush of a winter sky.

They call it the shadow season,
But maybe it’s a quiet reason.
To love what fades, to let it go,
To trust what only endings know.
Beauty stays beyond the sin—
The north wind’s working on me again.

Bridge

Maybe this is the sacred ache,
The gentle bend that hearts must make.
Even the night, in silver hue,
Holds a light that’s breaking through.

They call it the shadow season,
But maybe it’s a quiet reason.
To love what fades, to let it go,
To trust what only endings know.
Beauty stays beyond the sin—
The north wind’s working on me again.

Outro

So here I am in the northern air,
Listening close to a silent prayer.
Letting the north wind do its part,
Till sorrow tunes my steady heart.