Contrite and Lowly: Sacred Smallness, Real Life Is Now

(post #9)

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What does it mean to be contrite and lowly?

How can a God who inhabits eternity also inhabit my heart?

About 9 months ago I did a word study on Isaiah 57:15, because I was so struck by the description of a God who dwells in “a high and holy place” and “also dwells with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit.”

For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: “I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite.”  Isaiah 57:15

The idea of God’s grace had been turning over in my mind, this wave of realizing just how much “our righteousness is like filthy rags” (Isaiah 64:6) and how actually, despite all the remnants of Imago Dei that linger in us, all the remnants of good – the good we do and experience and feel – compared to that One Who Inhabits Eternity, Whose Name Is Holy, among us “there is none righteous, none who understands, and none who do good” at all. (Romans 3:9-12)

Place us before the Living God (who inhabits eternity!) and we are all pretty much in the same boat. None of us dwell in high and holy places. None of us are high and lifted up. The worst we do and the best we are do not vary that greatly from each other when placed in contrast with the person and character of God. There is great inequality between my best best and God himself, and I am left thinking of the song by Rich Mullins in which he sings, “with these our hells and our heavens, so few inches apart…we are awfully small and not as strong as we think we are.”

It is precisely because our hells and our heavens are mere inches apart that our steadiness of heart comes in Jesus and no one else. Faith is in God, not in man, not in man and the choices he may or may not make. Faith is in God, not in circumstances and the way they may or may not turn out. Faith is in God, not in ourselves and the goodness or awfulness of who we think we are. Faith is in God, not in the hope of people we love being well or made whole. Faith is in God, in the everlastingness and eternal kindness of the God who fills out the stretches of eternity with all that he is.

This is a God who boasts of dwelling with the contrite and humble in spirit. Literally, this is a God who chooses to dwell with people who are crushed, beaten, depressed, and destroyed.  He does so in oder to revive, which means to prosper, sustain completely, give new life, make alive again in heart.

“Revive the heart of the contrite,” He says, and this heart means mind, emotions, will, affections, joy, wounded-ness, courage. All the things, all of the inner man.

Our experience is never outside the capacity of our Father. Our broken places are exactly where he chooses to dwell.

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Word Study:

For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: “I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite.”  Isaiah 57:15

From a commentary:

• With him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit – The word ‘contrite’ (דכא dakkâ’) means properly that which is broken, crushed, beaten small, trodden down.
• To revive the spirit – literally, ‘to make alive.’ The sense is, he imparts spiritual life and comfort. He is to them what refreshing rains and genial suns and dews are to a drooping plant.

From Strong’s Concordance:

• Contrite: dakka – pulverized, crushed into powder, destroyed
• Humble: from shapel – depressed, literally or figuratively — base, low, lowest, lowly, subjected, deeper
• Revive: chayah (khaw-yaw’) – live; have life; continue in life; remain alive; sustain life; live on or upon; prosper, quicken; revive from: sickness, discouragement of spirit, faintness, death; revive to: life, restoration; to refresh, preserve, let live, cause to grow
• Spirit: roach (roo’-akh) – breath, wind, what constitutes our being, the sign and symbol of life (a feminine noun, the word to describe God’s breath that gives us literal and spiritual life is feminine in nature).  Also, roach –  spirit, animation, vivacity, vigor, courage
• Heart: leb (labe); masculine noun; inner man, mind, will, heart, inner part, in the midst, affections, soul; of mind: comprehending mind, power of mind, breadth of mind, knowledge, wise mind, intelligent mind, thinking, reflections, muse, memory, calling to mind, inclinations, resolutions, determinations of will (“set the mind…”); of character: broken of heart, new heart, clean heart, evil heart, perverse in heart, deceit of heart, double heart, seat of pride, uncircumcised heart; a seat to: man himself, appetites, emotions and passions, joy and gladness, desire, trouble, sorrow, trembling, vexation, fear, wounded-ness, courage (stout-hearted), heart of a lion, heart as firm as stone. (Job 41:16, 2 Samuel 17:10)

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