as the waters cover the sea

More and more lately, as I observe some particularly nasty act or see someone broken by a tragic event, I find myself thinking, “If only you knew God!” When I think that, I guess I’m recognizing that the only thing that keeps me from being mean-spirited, and the only thing that enables me to bear up in hard times, is what I know of God’s character and his promises. I wonder how people get by without God, and I wish they didn’t.

There will come a day when the entire world will know God, and in fact know all about God. It says so in Isaiah 11:9: “ . . . the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord

as the waters cover the sea.” Just like the flood engulfed all living things in the time of Noah, we will all drown in the knowledge of God when that time comes.

That may sound scary to the ones trying to deny God or run from him or discredit him. This verse describes a time when all of us will have to come to terms with how well or poorly we honored and served God. 

But really, this flood of God-knowing is one of the most wonderful promises in all of scripture. Look at the three verses before this one:

“The wolf will live with the lamb,

the leopard will lie down with the goat,

the calf and the lion and the yearling together;

and a little child will lead them.

The cow will feed with the bear,

their young will lie down together,

and the lion will eat straw like the ox.

The infant will play near the cobra’s den,

the young child will put its hand into the viper’s nest.

They will neither harm nor destroy

on all my holy mountain,

for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord

as the waters cover the sea.”

That’s what knowing God does – it makes us loving and kind instead of nasty and mean. Whoever wrote the story of the Grinch got closer to the truth than he knew; all of us by nature have hearts three sizes too small, hearts that prompt bad feelings towards others. But when we get to know God, we become bighearted. It feels so good to serve others.

That change is the outcome of Christmas, when Jesus came to fix our broken relationship with God and to show us the Father. Just as sin turned us into Grinches, Jesus transforms us into God’s kind of people.

Oh, how this world needs that. Oh, how I need it. Watch and wait.