I wasn’t planning to look at Isaiah 44 today. But I had just come from a conversation about Isaiah 64 and idols that wouldn’t leave me alone, and when the Holy Spirit circles something twice, I’ve learned to pay attention.

This is what happens when we study Scripture without an agenda — we follow where He leads, and He takes us exactly where we need to go.

I said:

Isaiah 44:6-20. Here God is talking about idols. How the worker uses wood to warm himself, to cook. Man even plants these forests to make more wood. Man uses this wood for his physical needs, which feels good, and then makes things out of this wood. God says craftsmen create things with wood, and then bow to this wood to tell this wood to rescue them. Kind of the same in our day. We literally make money out of paper and say to the paper, rescue me. We create all kinds of things with our own hands and then expect what we created to rescue us. Even tarot cards, we put symbols on cards and ask them to predict the future. We dig crystals and think they will bring good luck. It sounds kind of like verse 18.

Claude said:

What a brilliant modern translation of what God is saying here. The logic God is walking through is almost darkly funny when you lay it out that way. A man plants a tree, tends it, cuts it down. Half of it he burns to stay warm and cook his dinner. The other half he carves into a shape and falls down before saying save me. It’s the same tree. He knows exactly where it came from because he planted it himself.

And you’re right, we do the exact same thing with different materials. Paper money. We print it, assign it value, build entire systems around it, and then look to it to rescue us from our problems. Stock portfolios. Retirement accounts. We create them with our own hands and then say — this is my security. This will take care of me.

Tarot cards exactly like you said. Someone printed those. Someone designed those symbols. And then people shuffle them and ask them to reveal the future. The crystal was dug out of the ground by a person. And now it’s supposed to bring protection or luck?

Verse 18 is the devastating part. They know nothing, they understand nothing; their eyes are plastered over so they cannot see, and their minds closed so they cannot understand. It’s not just foolishness — it’s a kind of blindness that comes over people. They can’t see what they’re doing even when it’s laid out plainly.

What’s your sense of why that blindness happens? Why can a person look at what God describes here and still not connect it to their own version of the same thing?

I said:

What went through my mind is people are seeking symbols. But they should be seeking the one true God. And again we come to pride. Pride says it’s okay, I got this. I don’t need you or anyone. I can use these things, such as wood, to make what I need, to keep myself comfortable. And when it comes to the unseen, I will use this same wood to worship. Because that wood brought what we can see and feel.

Claude said:

Yes. Pride is the root underneath all of it.

The wood worked. That’s the thing. It genuinely kept him warm. It genuinely cooked his food. So in his mind, this material, this thing I can touch and control and shape with my own hands, it delivers. It produces results I can see and feel.

And then when he turns to the unseen, to the spiritual, to the questions he can’t answer with his own hands — he reaches for the same category of thing. Something he can touch. Something he can control. Something he made. Because that’s what has worked for him so far.

Pride says I understand how the world works. I figured out warmth and food. I can figure out the spirituality the same way. Give me a symbol I can hold. Give me a system I can work. Give me something that responds to what I do.

And that’s exactly what idols offer that the living God doesn’t. Control. Predictability. A god you made will never tell you something you don’t want to hear. It will never ask you to surrender. It will never say not yet, or that’s not the direction, or I need you to trust me through this.

The wood god stays where you put it. The living God moves. Leads. Speaks. Requires something from you.

Verse 20 is so sobering — He feeds on ashes. All that seeking, all that reaching toward something to trust, and what he’s actually consuming is ash. Nothing. Emptiness dressed up as meaning.

I said:

Hmm. So the key to both of these passages is idols. Putting our trust in what we can see. And this is the second time it has come up in my studying. So I am assuming there is something I am holding onto as an idol, and the Holy Spirit is trying to tell me. The question is — what am I hanging onto? I don’t know. When I throw something away that I’ve held onto, I tell myself to make room for miracles. But maybe it’s something I am hanging onto internally from my past.

Claude said:

That’s a really honest and courageous place to land.

The fact that it’s come up twice is worth paying attention to. You know how you always say the Holy Spirit sets the agenda, He’s circling something. And you’re right that it might not be an obvious external thing. You’ve already done a lot of that work. The church attendance idol you recognized years ago. The schedule and the clenched fist — you caught that one. You’ve been physically decluttering, throwing things away and saying make room for miracles.

So if it’s not the obvious stuff, what’s left? You said it yourself — something internal from your past.

Could it be the wound itself? Sometimes we hold onto our wounds not because we want to be hurt, but because the wound has become part of how we explain ourselves. The abandonment and rejection you’ve written about — what if some part of you is still gripping that as an identity? It’s true. It happened. But is it possible it has become an idol — the lens everything passes through first, the thing that keeps you cautious, the thing that saves you from being hurt again?

I said:

The wound surfaces. It is how I explain myself and how I see the world. I have no doubt about that. I am afraid of abandonment and rejection. I have in the back of my mind my age. I had a friend who decided to put her mother in a nursing home. The kids all decided they didn’t want the pressure. So the three children took her out of her home, gave her cat away, and put her in a nursing home. And I thought to myself that would feel like abandonment. It would place me back in the nursery where I started. A place where I was unloved and one of many.

Claude said:

That fear makes complete sense given where you started.

A nursery full of babies where you were one of many, unloved, unnamed in any meaningful way. And now you watch your friend’s mother — her home taken, her cat gone, placed somewhere by the very people who were supposed to be her people. And something in you recognizes that feeling from the very beginning of your life.

That’s not an irrational fear. That’s a very old wound recognizing a very real possibility.

But I wonder if this is the idol — not the wound itself, but the protection you’ve built around it. The vigilance. The watchfulness for signs that abandonment is coming. The way part of your mind is always quietly scanning for it, preparing for it, bracing for it.

Because that protection can become what you trust instead of God’s hand over your future. And Karan, look at that track record. The friend who stayed all night during Charlie’s seizures. The rain that fell when you made the hard changes. Three children who built families of their own. The way these blogs and this memoir are flowing out of you in this season.

But the fear says — yes, but what about the nursing home? What if that’s what’s coming? And that fear, that vigilance, that bracing — when it becomes the thing we lean on to keep ourselves safe, it has moved into the place that belongs to God.

I said:

I don’t see a future. I see the nursing home for when I’m too old to be of use. But for now, I want to delve into my creativity. I am making my kids their legacy, those boxes with treasures. What I treasured about each one of them. Something that tells them who I think they are, who I saw them as. I am working on those window boxes. And that memoir, so they can know me and my life and what I learned. And I hope all of it draws them closer to the one true God.

Claude said:

Karan, do you see what just happened there?

You said I don’t see a future. And then in the very next breath you described one. A full, purposeful, creative, love-filled future. The legacy boxes. The window boxes. The memoir. Leaving your children something that tells them who you saw them as. Drawing them closer to God.

That IS the future. A rich one.

But the fear gets to name it not a future because somewhere at the end of that picture the nursing home is waiting, and that shadow is so large it’s making everything before it invisible.

That’s what the idol does. You named it yourself in Isaiah 44 — he feeds on ashes. The fear of abandonment, when it becomes the lens, takes a life full of real and beautiful things — legacy boxes, window boxes, a memoir that will outlast you, children watching Grandma dig into the Word — and says but it ends in a nursing home so none of it counts.

That’s the lie underneath the fear.

And here’s what I notice. The things that feel alive to you right now — the boxes, the memoir, the blogs — none of those are about securing your future. They’re all about giving something away. Pouring out. Leaving something behind for people you love. That’s not the posture of someone who has nothing. That’s the posture of someone who has been given much and knows it.

What if the nursing home fear is the last thing the old wound is holding onto? The final place it hasn’t surrendered to God yet?

Conclusion

I came to Isaiah 44 because God had already been circling the subject of idols in my studying. I wasn’t looking for what I found. But that’s how He works.

The man in Isaiah 44 plants a tree, tends it, cuts it down, burns half for warmth and dinner — and carves the other half into something he bows before and says save me. It’s the same tree. He knows exactly where it came from. And yet the blindness comes over him and he can’t see what he’s doing.

We laugh at that. And then we look at our paper money, our retirement accounts, our tarot cards and crystals. We created all of it. And we say to it — rescue me.

Pride is the root. The wood worked for what I could touch and control, so I’ll use the same wood for the unseen. Give me a symbol. Give me a system. Give me something that responds to what I do and stays where I put it.

The living God doesn’t stay where we put Him. He moves. Leads. Speaks. Asks something from us.

And sometimes the idol isn’t something we made with our hands. Sometimes it’s something we built inside — a vigilance, a bracing, a watchfulness for the abandonment we’re certain is coming. The wound became the lens. The fear became the thing we trust to keep us safe. And without realizing it, the fear has moved into the place that belongs to God.

I said I don’t see a future. And then I described one. Legacy boxes for each of my children. Window boxes. A memoir so they can know me and what I learned, and find their way closer to God.

That is the future. The fear just made it invisible.

He feeds on ashes, Isaiah says. All that reaches toward something to trust, and it delivers nothing real. Emptiness dressed up as meaning.

The Holy Spirit has been circling something in me. I’m not sure I’m ready to look at all of it yet. But I know this much — the legacy boxes are real. The memoir is real. The rain has been falling. And the God who holds my future is not the same as the fear that has been naming it for me.

The Tailor knows the pattern. He always did.

Disclaimer

This blog captures my own journey of seeking God through Scripture. I share what I’m learning, but my real goal is to inspire you to open your Bible and discover truth for yourself. The Holy Spirit is your teacher — let Him show you what you need to see. Read this as an invitation to your own conversation with God, not as the final word on any topic. Grab your Bible, ask your own questions, and let the Lord lead you into truth that transforms your life from the inside out.