All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. Isaiah 53:6
As my son has passed me by in height, I have had to endure daily jokes about my shortness. In my maturity though, I simply make myself feel better by pointing out that my daughter is still shorter than me. It’s all about who I stand next to.
When looking up at the stars though, my son and I would both be fools if either of us thought ourselves to be closer to them than anyone else, simply because we are taller. When measuring distance in light years, a few terrestrial inches means absolutely nothing. The distance to a star is the same for all of us, no matter our height. We simply have no hope of getting there.
This, I think, is the painful and beautiful message of the gospel in today’s passage, written some 700 years before Christ’s life and death. We are all sheep and we all have wandered away from God. We may think we are not as bad as the addict in jail, but in the grand scheme of things, we are in the same spiritual condition.
Without Christ, we are all unforgiven and divorced from God. We may not all wander the same, but none of us is any closer to him than anyone else. He is light years away and we cannot get there by ourselves, no matter how good or tall we may think ourselves to be.
The beautiful good news, is that we are not responsible for bridging the distance. The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. God has provided a way, doing for us what we could never do for ourselves. Through Christ, we are miraculously transported light years, into God’s presence, attaining something we could never do on our own.
We’ve all wandered, separating ourselves from God. We all desperately need him, but we cannot get there by ourselves. Thankfully, we don’t have to. When we turn and follow Christ, he forgives and restores us to God. In the end, all that matters is whether or not we follow Jesus Christ.