Wake up, wake up, O Jerusalem!
    You have drunk the cup of the Lord’s fury.
You have drunk the cup of terror,
    tipping out its last drops.
18 Not one of your children is left alive
    to take your hand and guide you.
19 These two calamities have fallen on you:
    desolation and destruction, famine and war.
And who is left to sympathize with you?
    Who is left to comfort you?
20 For your children have fainted and lie in the streets,
    helpless as antelopes caught in a net.
The Lord has poured out his fury;
    God has rebuked them.

21 But now listen to this, you afflicted ones
    who sit in a drunken stupor,
    though not from drinking wine.
22 This is what the Sovereign Lord,
    your God and Defender, says:
“See, I have taken the terrible cup from your hands.
    You will drink no more of my fury.
23 Instead, I will hand that cup to your tormentors,
    those who said, ‘We will trample you into the dust
    and walk on your backs.’” (NLT).

The worst – prophesied in 39:5-7 – had happened, and was now behind them.

in chapter 51:9 the call has gone up for God’s arm to ”Awake”, but now the ball is hit firmly back into His people’s court (17a, 52:1).

Sometimes I feel I spend much of my life only half-awake spiritually (if that much, in fact! See Luke 9:32: ”…but when they became fully awake, they saw his glory…”). How do we wake up and stay awake? There are probably several answers, but I want to emphasise that the traditional spiritual disciplines, such as prayer, Scripture reading and meditation, fasting, silence, solitude etc really can help us to be attentive to the things of God.

‘But think how much of your waking life your eyes are open, but passive. You are seeing the world but hardly noticing anything. You are hearing all the time but hardly noticing any particular sounds…Most people read half asleep. We read the Bible pretty much like we watch television – passively. What I mean by passively is that we expect the TV programme to affect us. Entertain us, or inform us, or teach us. Our minds are almost entirely in the passive mode, as impulses come into our minds. The opposite is when our minds go on alert and watch carefully. We become aggressively observant.’ (John Piper: ‘Reading the Bible Supernaturally’, p.327.)

PRAYER: Lord, deliver me from a dopey, dozy existence, and cause me to be fully awake that I may see your glory. Help me to take all necessary to wake myself up, and stay alert.