In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphs, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. And they were calling to one another: “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.” At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.“Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty." -Isaiah 6:1–5 NIV

Imagine what it would be like to see heaven -- especially if you didn't have to die first to do so. That's what happened to the prophet Isaiah, who wrote about what he saw in the passage above. Although he didn't have to die to see heaven, he quickly felt like he would anyway. In the presence of God, Isaiah falls on his face and says "Woe is me, I am ruined," (I am a dead man).

We don't talk much about the holiness of God. I think we don't know how to wrap our minds around it. When we do hear the word, we often attach to it meaning that it doesn't or shouldn't have. The word can bring to mind almost an arrogant moralism to our minds. On some level, the word means "other." God is somehow "other" than us -- alien, set apart, even on some level incompatible with humans in a post-Garden of Eden world. At the same time, we as people were made in God's image and likeness -- even after sin entered the world (sin didn't change the fact that we are image bearers of God). Admittedly deep stuff; the stuff of theologians and philosophers. But, it is also something that the rest of us benefit from considering. Read the words of Isaiah again. Now think about the fact that because of what Jesus did on the cross, we can come before this same God with the salutation, Daddy. That reality blows my mind. God is perfectly holy, yet when we put our hope in Jesus, we are holy too. Part of our role as followers of Jesus, then, is to live into who we already are.

-- What comes to mind when you think about the holiness of God?
-- How does it make you feel to know that God sees you as holy?
-- What does it look like for you to live out that reality Monday through Saturday (as well as Sunday)?
-- What do you think God's idea of us being "set apart" looks like?