A veil prevents those who visit every other part of the Temple from entering its holiest space, a chamber in which enormous golden statues of cherubs join wall to wing to wall implying God’s holiness. “The cherubim stood on their feet, facing the nave. And he made the veil of blue and purple and crimson fabrics and fine linen, and he worked cherubim on it.” The veil’s embroidery indicates and obscures what is beyond it.

Isaiah sees the Lord high, exalted, and above all, holy. Heavenly creatures circle God’s throne declaring holiness his, and his glory the earth’s. His experience is only a vision though, because Isaiah, as Israel, is unholy. God uses a seraph to cleanse Isaiah’s lips, then sends him out to declare and contrast Israel’s recalcitrance with God’s faithfulness to their remnant. Isaiah enters God’s chamber in a vision to be sent out from it to those who have lost their way to God in reality.

Were Bethlehem’s shepherds to visit the Temple a few miles away, they would see only sewn cherubs on blue fabric—not the gilded wings beyond the veil. Were they in a vision with Isaiah, they would declare themselves unclean and know the messengers they see are not actual. But in this field—not Temple or trance—the sky’s blue veil, with its embedded stars inviting their gaze toward an obscured eternity, is torn open to reveal heaven’s messengers in reality declaring that the glory of God in the highest now intrudes its peace on earth.

God rends the heavens to reveal that light and holiness are pouring into the world in the born

of his own Son, the “Savior, who is Christ the Lord.”

This week, may we be the testimony that the light of holiness still escapes his chamber to fill the world.