Walking around naked & barefoot...

No...not me! Thank goodness! I'm in the book of Isaiah right now. Isaiah is a tough book of the Bible for me to read. This morning I read the very short chapter 20. When I first looked at it I thought to myself, "This is really short...it won't take long at all to read it & then refer to my footnotes on it." Oh, boy I was wrong! I was stuck on verse 2 for a long time. "the Lord told Isaiah son of Amoz, "Take off all of your clothes, including your sandals." Isaiah did as he was told & walked around naked & barefoot."
I'm like, "You're kidding me right???" Why in the world would God tell him to do that? At first I thought he did it just once in front of the people to prove a point but no...read verse 3 which says, "Then the Lord said, "My servant Isaiah has been walking around naked & barefoot for the last three years. This is a sign-a symbol of the terrible troubles I will bring upon Egypt & Ethiopia."
Three years??? He walked around naked & barefoot for three years! Why??? Because God told him to!
This is what my footnotes say about those verses (from the NLT Life Application Study Bible):
God's command to Isaiah to walk about naked for three years was a humiliating experience. God was using Isaiah to demonstrate the humiliation that Egypt & Ethiopia would experience at the hands of Assyria. But the message was really for Judah: Don't put your trust in foreign governments, or your will experience this kind of shame & humiliation from your captors.
It goes on to say:
God asked Isaiah to do something that seemed shameful & illogical. At times, God may ask us to do things we don't understand. We must obey God in complete faith, for he will never ask us to do something wrong.
Wow!!! That's a lot of "meat" from such a short chapter. And like most times when I read the Bible...it's very timely for my current circumstances. Walking in humility & faith...how am I doing at it? Why is it so hard to do? That's a lot of "meat" to chew on.