The vision of God

Very few people have ever seen God during their life on earth.  Isaiah the prophet was one of them, and the sight of God had the same effect on him that it has always had on all those who have seen him.

One day, when he was a young man, he was attending a service in the Temple at Jerusalem, and as he watched the smoke of the incense rising from the altar, the walls and the roof of the Temple and everything around him seemed to fade away.  The great cloud of smoke opened and he found himself looking at the Lord God sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up.  As soon as Isaiah looked at him, he realised that he was totally unfit to be in the presence of the all-holy God.  “Woe is me!” he said, “I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” (NRSV, Isaiah 6:1-5).