January 29

Read: Isaiah 6:1-7

Mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts (Isaiah 6:5).

Holy, Holy, Holy

“God inflames the soul with a burning craving for absolute purity. One burns for complete innocency and holiness of personal life. No man can look on God and live, live in his own faults, live in the shadow of the least self-deceit… The blinding purity of God in Christ, how captivating, how alluring, how compelling it is! The pure in heart shall see God? More, they who see God shall cry out to become pure in heart, even as He is pure, with all the energy of their souls.

“This has been an astonishing and unexpected element for me… No average goodness will do, no measuring of our lives by our fellows, but only a relentless, inexorable divine standard. No relatives suffice; only absolutes satisfy the soul committed to holy obedience. Absolute honesty, absolute gentleness, absolute self-control, unwearied patience and thoughtfulness in the midst of the raveling friction of home and office and school and shop.

“Boldly must we risk the dangers which lie along the margins of excess, if we would live the life of the second half. For the life of obedience is a holy life, a separated life, a renounced life, cut off from worldly compromises, distinct, heaven-directed in the midst of men.

“He who walks in obedience, following God the second half, living the life of inner: prayer of submission and exultation, on him God’s holiness takes hold as a mastering passion of life. Yet ever he cries out in abysmal sincerity, ‘I am the blackest of all the sinners of earth. I am a man of unclean lips, for mine eyes have seen the King, Jehovah of Hosts.’ For humility and holiness are twins in the astonishing birth of obedience in the heart of men. So God draws unworthy us, in loving tenderness up into fellowship with His glorious self” (Thomas R. Kelly, A Testament of Devotion).