In the winter of 1811–1812 the New Madrid earthquakes turned the Mississippi backward. Waterfalls climbed bluffs, boats hung in treetops, and for a few impossible minutes the continent’s greatest river ran north. The earth itself forgot which way was down.
Isaiah 2 tells of a similar reversal, only more permanent. The prophet gazes at the modest ridge of Zion and declares that one day it will stand higher than Everest. Then, he says, the nations will stream toward it—walking uphill as if gravity has changed its mind.
In the ancient world, rivers and people alike flowed toward power: Nile to Pharaoh, Euphrates to Babylon, Tiber to Rome. Desire obeyed the same slope. Isaiah announces that God has shaken the ground of history. The true summit is no longer empire but a small hill outside Jerusalem where, centuries later, a cross would be planted. That is where the world’s weight now tilts. That is where we flow.
Most days the old gravity still feels stronger. The world is built for downhill living: hurry, image, outrage, comfort. Going the other way—toward patience, truth that costs, forgiveness when resentment is cheaper—feels clumsy, slow, almost absurd.
But every time someone chooses the harder kindness, every time a community lingers in worship instead of chasing the next thing, the river runs backward again. The “upward call of Christ” always flows toward the cross. “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,” the nations say—plural, always plural. No one swims this current alone. So we walk together, leaning on one another when the slope is
steep.
The world runs downhill.
We flow toward the cross.
Maranatha,
Jordy
