Isaiah on Tuesday - Nudism as Prophecy

Sometimes prophecy is shown not told. In a very visible demonstration of what would become of Cush and Egypt (see Cush and Egypt's entries) Isaiah went without clothes for THREE YEARS. Three years!? Those must have been some very cold winters. Check it out:

1 In the year that the supreme commander, sent by Sargon king of Assyria, came to Ashdod and attacked and captured it- 2 at that time the LORD spoke through Isaiah son of Amoz. He said to him, "Take off the sackcloth from your body and the sandals from your feet." And he did so, going around stripped and barefoot. 3 Then the LORD said, "Just as my servant Isaiah has gone stripped and barefoot for three years, as a sign and portent against Egypt and Cush, ^[a] 4 so the king of Assyria will lead away stripped and barefoot the Egyptian captives and Cushite exiles, young and old, with buttocks bared —to Egypt's shame.

Now Cush and Egypt are redeemed according to the previous two chapters, but it apparently took them being led away with "buttocks bared" for the message to sink in. That's not a phrase you read very often in the Bible, but what stuns me more is Isaiah's submission to go the full monty for so long. His wife and kids must have been completely beside themselves, but when the LORD says to do something, you can either do it or not. Isaiah had the confidence to do it and do it in a big way.

Which leads me to my main point - prophets are people on the edge. These guys led lives that wereoutrageouss, amazing and often deadly. They suffered greatly for their devotion and submission to God. I think of John the Baptist, a wild man living in the desert far outside of society's norms. He was beheaded for his radical devotion to the truth. These people had to speak truth to power, to follow God at all costs and live their lives with single-mindedpurposee. I wonder if I could do the same. Granted, the voice would have to be very clear and very obviously from God for me to go, uh, clothing-free, but is my devotion the same? Could I even hear that voice?

One thing I am sure of is this - today's prophets need to be as wild and outrageous, if not more so, than yesterday's. There will most certainly be people who are completely outside of society's norms, yet fully within God's will. People who have totally eschewed whatever the world might think in order to devote themselves to God. I believe that the generation to come will be full of these people. They will be rejected, despised and ignored. Then again, that's just par for the course for these people called prophets.