Where the Ceiling Used to Be

On March 3, 2020, a tornado ripped through Cookeville, Tennessee, at two in the morning, killing nineteen people and shredding entire neighborhoods into matchsticks. One resident described standing in his living room the next morning — except there was no living room anymore. Just a concrete slab, open sky, and his daughter's shoe sitting upright in the mud as if someone had carefully placed it there.

That is Isaiah 64. It is the prayer we pray when the ceiling is gone and we stop performing for the Almighty. "Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down," Isaiah cries — not a polished invocation but a hoarse, desperate plea from a people standing in the ruins of everything they thought was permanent.

And notice what follows the desperation: confession. "All our righteousnesses are like filthy rags." Standing in the wreckage, Israel does not point fingers. They own their part. There is something about losing everything that strips away pretense.

But here is what makes this passage ache with hope — even in the ashes, they say, "You, Lord, are our Father." Not "You were." Not "You might be." Present tense. The relationship survives the ruin.

Sometimes El Shaddai does His deepest work not when we have it together, but when we are standing where the ceiling used to be, finally honest enough to whisper, "I need You to come down."