How does a people God has blessed so richly turn their backs on him? Isaiah 1 opens with God’s lament over Jerusalem—once full of justice, now a harlot filled with murderers—and brings the question home for Lent: when he looks at you, does he lament?

When we want vengeance, we want to get back—but Isaiah 1:24–25 shows a God who wants to get back to good, and that difference is harder to hold onto than it sounds when the anger is righteous and the wrong is real.