The three-fold praise of God from Isaiah 6:3 became the substance of a great hymn of the church. “Holy, holy, holy,” Reginald Heber wrote in 1826. Well-known and used in many songbooks, the glorious praise of God that comes in three-fold repetition soars toward the heavens.

Heber wrote that our song should rise to God early in the morning. Merciful and mighty, God in three persons, blessed trinity.

I see the pattern of three in many areas of life, in buildings, barns, windows, and elsewhere. Here, the prophet Isaiah, repeated by John the Revelator, is three-fold “holy, holy, holy.”

In Heber’s hymn, Cherubim and seraphim fell before the throne, expressing God’s past, present, and future holiness. Our response can be to extol the righteousness of God, to say that there is none beside him, perfect in power, love, and purity.