The year was 1981. The eyes of the world were focused on Frascati, Italy. A six-year-old boy had fallen into a deep well. A shaft was dug to free him, but he fell deeper. A midget was lowered two hundred feet into the shaft. He also failed to free the boy. A reporter told of the plaintive cry of the boy to his mother, relayed through a microphone lowered into the well. "Mamma, mamma," he kept repeating, "When are you coming?"

The plaintive cry of Isaiah is much like that. He cries out to God, "O, that you would rend the heavens, that you would come down . . . " He is saying, "Mamma, Mamma, when are you coming?" Isaiah yearns for some sign of nearness from a God who seems to have turned His back on His people. A God-forsaken people is a people in trouble.

Have you ever felt God-forsaken? …