Engaging Your Imagination

In the year of King Uzziah's death, I saw the LORD sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted, with the train of His robe filling the temple. Isaiah 6:1 (NASB)

Isaiah's vision of the throne and the One seated upon it has totally captivated my imagination. (Can you tell?) In previous posts I shared about the amount of fabric it would take just to fill the temple and examining every detail of the fabric.

But the wonder of the train of His robe filling the temple wasn't enough. I began to wonder how the fabric was embellished. Was it woven around the edge in golden threads and inlaid with precious jewels? Was the entire piece of fabric encrusted in treasures of all kinds? Was the lining of spun silk? Were tapestries a part of this ornate garment? How many colors were incorporated into it? How long would it have taken for artisans and seamstresses to have completed this incredible piece? Do angels have a sewing guild to craft such priceless works? Scripture doesn't tell us these things, of course. It all had to do with my imagination, and filled with limitless possibilities.

God-Color Moment
My imagination has truly run wild with this. How about yours? Take some time right now to imagine this work of art that filled the entire temple. What do you see?   Spend some additional time today describing what you are envisioning. A masterpiece in prose, perhaps a crayon rendering, a pencil sketch, an embellished piece of fine fabric, maybe there's a song in your heart . . . not all are writers, artists, musicians, or stitchers, but please try to express what you are seeing . . . let this be an act of worship to the Creator of the universe.

Photo from www.canstockphoto.com
All other content Copyright Lynn U. Watson, 2004, 2011 

Isaiah "Saw" with Absolute Clarity

My morning devotion this morning happened to focus on the Radiance of God's Glory. Unintentional from my perspective, but oh so awesome when God chooses to bless in this way! :o) I feel compelled to share this quote.

The full meaning of the Hebrew word ra-ah, translated "saw" in this verse (Isaiah 6:1), is significant. It means to see something with absolute clarity. To worship God effectively we must have a proper view of Him, not allowing anything to obstruct our vision. That divinely focused view only comes to those who study God's nature and character as revealed in His Word. Anyone who plunges deeply into God's Word rises highest in their praises of His glory.

From "31 Days Meditating on the Majesty of Jesus"

by Jack Hayford & Dick Eastman

How Large Is Your God?

Humor me today please. I'm taking this whole "the train of His robe filled the temple" image just one step further. Remember I mentioned the seamstress in me, and I'll be taking this opportunity to expand on the a bit further. :o)

When our children were growing up, to supplement our family income, I spent many hours at the sewing machine creating custom garments for the public. Rachel, our first born, did not entertain herself well for very long. (How many of you have had one of those children?) This meant often times holding her in my lap while I sewed, or snatching moments to sew late at night or during her very short naps -- she didn't like those either. When she was old enough to sit up and get into things, her curiosity and investigative skills happened onto a new "toy" --  grocery sacks full of fabric scraps! Rachel would sit on the floor where I was working and carefully dump those sacks. She would slowly inspect every single piece of fabric in those sacks as though she were looking for a rare treasure. When she finished with those two sacks, I could fill them up and she would repeat the entire search all over again. She was thrilled with this little game, and it won me 45 minutes every afternoon of uninterrupted sewing time.

You guessed it! I decided to estimate just how many grocery sacks of fabric it would have taken to fill the temple . . . . my calculation: 151,875 or so . . . That's a whole lot of grocery sacks. Now Rachel had two sacks, and she went through each of them twice in 45 minutes. So, if she had 151,875 sacks, and was willing to go through each of them twice for 45 minutes, she would spend 56,953 hours or 2,373 days, or 339 weeks or 6.5 years of her life 24/7 at this. I'm sure she would discover some pretty cool things about the fabrics a she examined their intricate patterns and textures. If you will further consider that she could go through the same two sacks of scraps for a month or more before we changed out the mix -- well you get the picture -- this could be a life long, 24-hour-a-day activity and the discoveries would not be made this side of eternity.

In future posts we will learn about our bodies being the very temple of the Holy Spirit, and Jesus lives within each believer's heart. Like He did with Isaiah, God wants us to see our own personal sin/idol (that which puts distance between us and God), so that He can come in with His powerful cleansing and help us to rebuild those places in our temples so that we will reflect His gory in a powerful and colorful way to the world around us.

As I prepared to share all of this with you, God grew mighty large in my eyes!!! As you visualized the pictures I was expressing, did your understanding of His proportions take on a new meaning?

Like Rachel with the sacks of fabric, we could spend a life time examining the wonders of our God, and continuously be amazed at what we see revealed. If you can look at your life in light of the goodness and majesty of a magnificent God, then you can see the imprint of His faithfulness on every minute of it -- 24/7/365. Do you think this ENORMOUS GOD has some big plans for your life and mine? Are you ready to allow Him to prepare you to be used for His purposes?

Look at Isaiah 6:8 (NASB) again:
Then I heard the voice of the LORD saying, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?" Then I said, "Here am I. Send me!"
Do you desire to be better prepared to boldly answer when the Lord calls on you? Preparation, restoration, and renovation of our temples as God's throne is the journey we are on -- a journey that I pray will increase your heart to serve Him only and to do it with certainty and joy!

Copyright, Lynn U. Watson, 2004, 2011

In the next post I'll be sharing the "chapters" that lie ahead so you will have a bit of a map. I will be spreading these over the months ahead. Remember that the entire blog is always here. You may come on board anytime. There's no time table except as you and God choose.

The Train of His Robe Filled the Temple

Read Isaiah 6:1-8 again, either from your own Bible or you will find it in the very first post in this blog. In the next two posts (and before we go on) I would like to focus on God's enormous proportions -- the picture that Isaiah is poetically creating for us here.

The Scripture says God was seated on a throne above the temple -- high and exalted. It then tells us that just the train of His robe -- just the train -- filled the entire temple. That amount of fabric totally mesmerized me. The seamstress (one of several hats I wear from time to time) in me felt compelled to figure this out.

A little research uncovered this fact: Queen Elizabeth II of England donned a train made of purple velvet for her coronation. The train measured 6.5 meters (about 21 feet) from her shoulder to the tip of the train. The train had been constructed from 22 meters (about 24.5 yards) of fabric. Supposing that they used three lengths of 60 inch wide fabric -- that would come out just about right -- the train would have been 15 feet wide and 21 feet long. That's 315 square feet. How does that compare with the amount of fabric needed for the train of God's robe to fill the entire temple? Before we even start doing the math, let me add that most velvet fabrics are loomed much narrower than 60 inches, which may make the figures we will be using on the conservative side.

Looking at Solomon's blueprints (see 2 Chronicles 3) for the temple, the measurements show that the inside of the temple was 90 feet long by 30 feet wide by 45 feet high. Multiplying that out, just the square feet of fabric to cover the floor would have had to be 2700 square feet. There are 15 square feet in each yard of 60 inch wide fabric. That's 180 yards of fabric to cover the floor. Now the temple is 45 feet high, and the train of His robe filled  the temple.

Must next calculation was how many layers of fabric it would take to get a stack 45 feet high. Velvet is pretty thick, and not accounting for the weight of it mashing the layers dow, I conservatively estimated six layers per inch. Forty-five feet equals 540 inches. Five hundred forty inches times six layrs to the inch is 3,240 layers of fabric.

Since each layer is 180 yards of fabric, we now need 583,200 yards of fabric to fill the temple. One mile is 1,760 yards long. That means we are talking about 331 miles of fabric. Consider, too, that He is seated high above the temple -- the train had to reach the temple before it could fill it up. We can only imagine how much more fabric that would require.

There is no conclusive evidence of what fabric this train would have been constructed, but hair of goats, sheep and camels as well as linen, flax, hem and silk were the common fibers of the day. Since Jesus is the King, and He is also the Lamb of God, I chose to learn a little about wool production. Soft fleece from the smaller sheep is produced at a rate of 2-6 pounds per sheep per year. There are two shearings each year. Since the average amount here is 4 pounds per sheep per year, if follows that for one shearing the average is 2 pounds. Are you still with me here?

Now I don't presume to know if 2 pounds of wool makes 2 pounds of yarn or not -- I'd guess it takes more ounces of the wool make the same measure of yarn, but for our purposes today, we're just going to say that the two measurements are equal. Just using an afghan pattern and dimensions and yarn weight to get an idea of how much wool it would take to create 583,200 yards of fabric, my calculations indicate that 4,665,600 sheep would need to be sheared. I can't even begin to imagine how many angels would have been employed to do the shearing, much less spin that wool and weave it! Again, this is all hypothetical, but allow it to paint you a picture of just how incredible Isaiah's vision really was, and why he saw his own shortcomings so intensely magnified.

Photo from www.mediastock-photo.com
All other content, Copyright Lynn U. Watson, 2004, 2011

A Vision of His Glory

Isaiah 6:1-8 paints a most articulate word picture of God's glory as Isaiah beheld it filling the temple in Jerusalem. I had been drawn to and absorbed in this passage for quite some time. Seriously contemplating this vision reinforced in super-mega sized reality the microscopic size of man and his lack of power to do or be anything without the magnificent true God of Heaven.

In the year of King Uzziah's death, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted, with the train of His robe filling the temple. Seraphim stood above Him, each having six wings; with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called out to another and said, "Holy, Holy, Holy is the LORD of hosts, the whole earth is full of His glory." And the foundations of the threshholds trembled at the voice of him who called out, while the temple was filling with smoke. 

Then I said, "Woe is me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts."


Then one of the seraphim flew to me, with a burning coal in his hand which he had taken from the altar with tongs. And he touched my mouth with it and said, "Behold, this has touched your lips; and your iniquity is taken away, and your sin is forgiven."


Then I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?" Then I said, "Here am I. Send me!"      

                                                                                                  ~~Isaiah 6:1-8 (NASB)

Totally blown away by the vision, Isaiah saw his unclean lips and those of his neighbors magnified to astronomical proportions. When we see God for Who He really is and realize we can't even comprehend His size, like Isaiah we are just as overwhelmed by our shortcomings. We would feel helpless to even think we could speak His name. We would be at the end of self, ready for our own sin/idols to be burned from our hearts, and ready to serve, reflecting the God colors of the light of His glory in our every day lives!!! (See Matthew 5:14, The Message)

I am excited to be sharing with you so much of the ways I have glimpsed God's glory, and how it has changed my life. Like Isaiah, I choose to say: "Here am I. Send me."

The words of a popular song by Mercy Me come to mind: "I Can Only Imagine." For those not familiar with the song, please visit YouTube. You'll find several videos featuring this inspiring song of worship and praise.

Copyright, Lynn U. Watson, 2004, 2011