Daily Devotional

Martin Luther coined a Latin phrase that cuts to the heart of Israel’s spiritual condition and our own: incurvatus in se, curved in on ourselves. The image is of a person so bent inward, so consumed with their own situation, their own comfort, their own disappointments, that their entire posture is directed toward their own belly button. They are not looking up. They are not looking out. Everything is filtered through the narrow lens of how it affects them.

This is precisely what had happened to the remnant of Israel. They had rebuilt the temple, done the religious work, and then turned inward when the anticipated glory did not arrive on schedule. Their unmet expectations became a filter through which everything, including God himself, was measured. God felt small because they were only looking at themselves and their circumstances.

God’s response in verse 5 is both a rebuke and an invitation: your own eyes shall see this. Look up. Look out. Something is happening in the world around you that testifies to my greatness. The Edomites, the descendants of Esau, were being pushed out of their land and displaced by the Nabataeans, right in front of Israel’s eyes. God was at work in history. He was moving. His purposes were advancing. But Israel could not see it because they were looking in.

Augustine warned that self-love is the great enemy of the love of God. A self-centered church, the sermon reminded us, will not convert unbelievers, will not care for the needy, will not raise up gospel workers for the world. It will not have the glory and honor of God as its main priority. The same is true of the self-centered believer. The cure is not willpower but vision. We need to look up and out, at the God who is at work, at the people around us who are perishing, at the world that desperately needs the gospel we carry.