In 1812, in a village east of Paris, a three-year-old named Louis Braille was playing in his father's harness workshop. He picked up an awl to punch a hole in a scrap of leather, the way he had watched his father do, and it slipped into his eye. The infection spread, and by five he was completely blind.
At ten he was sent to a school for blind children in Paris, where the few books were giant raised letters on heavy paper — slow to read, and impossible to write. When an army captain visited with a code of raised dots that soldiers could read in the dark, Louis spent three years of evenings and summers reworking it with a slate and a stylus — which is, more or less, a small blunt awl. At fifteen he had six dots, small enough to sit under one fingertip. At nineteen the school made him a teacher, and he spent the rest of his life teaching other blind students to read, paying out of his own salary for books to be written in his code.
Isaiah 58–66 holds enough for a month of lessons: fasting, the Sabbath, Zion's light, the Second Coming, a new heaven and a new earth. Rather than visit each for ten minutes, this lesson follows one thread that runs through the middle of them, because Isaiah says it twice, and Louis Braille lived a version of it. The people the Redeemer heals are the people he sends to repair. It starts with people who think God has stopped looking at them, and it ends with him answering them.
They felt unseen
Chapter fifty-eight opens on people who are doing everything right on paper. They seek God daily, they delight to know his ways, and they fast. And they are hurt:
Wherefore have we fasted, say they, and thou seest not? wherefore have we afflicted our soul, and thou takest no knowledge?Isaiah 58:3
Most of us have prayed some version of that. The answer comes at the start of the next chapter, and it is not a scolding:
Behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; neither his ear heavy, that it cannot hear:Isaiah 59:1
President Rosemary K. Chibota spoke this month about the man at the pool of Bethesda, thirty-eight years waiting while the crowd went by:
Where others had walked past him for years, the Savior saw him, ministered to him, and healed him.Rosemary K. Chibota, “A Child of God,” October 2026
She taught the southern African greeting sawubona — "I see you" — as more than a hello: an acknowledgment that the other person matters. That is the first thing Isaiah wants a discouraged people to hear. He sees you, even when it doesn't feel like it.
So he came himself
The feeling of distance is not imagined, though, and Isaiah doesn't pretend it is. The very next verse names it:
But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear.Isaiah 59:2
The distance is real, and it is not on God's side. The rest of the chapter is the people describing it from the inside — we wait for light, but behold obscurity — until the Lord looks for someone to stand in the breach on their behalf and finds nobody:
And he saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no intercessor: therefore his arm brought salvation unto him;Isaiah 59:16
Those words should sound familiar from the pool of Bethesda. When Jesus asked the man who had waited thirty-eight years whether he wanted to be made whole, he answered: Sir, I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool (John 5:7). Isaiah's there was no man, said by the man himself. Nobody had stood in his gap, so Jesus did.
An intercessor is someone who goes between. The striking word is wondered: God is surprised that no one stepped in. So he does it himself, with his own arm. Elder Renlund, speaking this month, used the very word Isaiah's imagery turns on:
There is more than enough to cover any breach, need, or deficit for all of us, for each of us.Dale G. Renlund, “How Long Will It Be Ere They Believe Me?” October 2026
And the chapter ends on the verse the lesson takes its name from:
And the Redeemer shall come to Zion, and unto them that turn from transgression in Jacob, saith the Lord.Isaiah 59:20
He came to bind up the brokenhearted
Centuries later, Jesus comes home to Nazareth, goes to the synagogue as his custom was, and stands up to read. He is handed the book of Isaiah, finds the place he wants, and reads what we now number Isaiah 61:
The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound;Isaiah 61:1
Then he closes the book, sits down, and with every eye in the room fastened on him says: This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears (Luke 4:21). The Redeemer chapter fifty-nine promised is standing in front of them, reading out his own job description.
It is worth reading that list slowly. The meek. The brokenhearted. Captives. Prisoners. Every name on it is someone in trouble. There is nobody on it who has things handled.
To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he might be glorified.Isaiah 61:3
Beauty for ashes is often quoted as though it were a cheerful phrase, and my dad slows down on it. Ashes mean something burned. The verse does not pretend the loss away or offer a smile in exchange for it; it offers beauty in place of something that really was destroyed. A lesson that skips straight to the beauty tells everyone still sitting in ashes that they are doing it wrong.
Two chapters later Isaiah says how close the Redeemer comes to the fire:
In all their affliction he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them: in his love and in his pity he redeemed them;Isaiah 63:9
Elder Michael A. Dunn told this month of a race where, ready to quit on the side of the trail, a friend quietly strapped Elder Dunn's hydration pack to his own waist. The course did not get any shorter. The load got lighter.
The Redeemer rescues not by shortening our course but by helping us lengthen our stride.Michael A. Dunn, “The Ninety and Ten,” October 2026
His hand is not too short to reach you. Most of us have seen it reach someone in our own ward this year, often through someone else's hands.
Then he asks us to do the same
And here is the turn the whole lesson rests on. The very next verse after beauty for ashes, the people who were healed do not stay patients:
And they shall build the old wastes, they shall raise up the former desolations, and they shall repair the waste cities, the desolations of many generations.Isaiah 61:4
Two verses later they get titles: ye shall be named the Priests of the Lord: men shall call you the Ministers of our God. The brokenhearted get bound up, and then they pick up tools. Isaiah does not seem to imagine healing that ends with the patient.
Elder Paul H. Sinclair told the story of the woman at the well this month, and summed up what happened to her in two sentences that could be a commentary on Isaiah 61:4:
She walked to the well that day as a pariah. She walked away from the well with a purpose.Paul H. Sinclair, “Quick to Help, Slow to Judge,” October 2026
She went straight back into the city and told people, and many of them came out to meet him because of what she said. The woman who came to the well alone brought a crowd back to it.
Isaiah has already given this job out once, to the people from the start of the lesson who fasted and felt unseen. His answer to them is that their fast is all about themselves, and he describes the one he chose:
Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke? Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh?Isaiah 58:6–7
They asked why God didn't see their fast. He answers with a fast that sees: when thou seest the naked. Elder Soares gave a whole talk to Isaiah 58 this month, and his summary of the turn the chapter makes is the one this lesson needs:
Thus, our fast becomes not only a personal act of devotion to God but also an outward expression of Christlike charity and love.Ulisses Soares, “A Higher and Holier Fast,” October 2026
And the people who fast that way are given a name:
And they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places: thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations; and thou shalt be called, The repairer of the breach, The restorer of paths to dwell in.Isaiah 58:12
Read it next to 61:4. Build the old wastes, build the old waste places. Raise up in both. Many generations in both. Isaiah describes the same work twice, three chapters apart, and both times it is given to people who were in trouble first.
And it is the same work he did for them. He saw them; they are to see the naked. He came to proclaim liberty to the captives; they are to let the oppressed go free. A breach is a hole in a wall. In chapter fifty-nine he found nobody to stand in it and stood there himself. In chapter fifty-eight he hands the trowel to the people he healed. My dad's line on it: the fast is not a transaction, it is a transformation. Isaiah 58 is not a price list. It describes what happens to a person whose hunger points them toward someone else's.
Elder Kearon, who flew gliders as a teenager, described faith as finding rising air — and ended on the same instruction Isaiah gives the healed:
And when you find lift yourself, show someone else where and how to rise!Patrick Kearon, “Jesus Lives to Lift,” October 2026
Here I am
Chapter fifty-eight doesn't leave the people who felt unseen with a job and no answer. Right after the fast he chose, it comes back to their complaint:
Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thine health shall spring forth speedily: … Then shalt thou call, and the Lord shall answer; thou shalt cry, and he shall say, Here I am.Isaiah 58:8–9
Thou seest not at the start of the chapter; Here I am by the end. And healing — thine health — comes to the people doing the repairing. Sometimes that answer comes through a person.
The story from this conference I most want a class to hear is President Timothy L. Farnes's. Nearly twenty years ago he had just been called into a stake presidency and not yet released as bishop, with five young children and a business to run. At a leadership meeting that Saturday he asked a question and felt it brushed aside. He called his wife and said they should go to dinner instead of ward temple night. She told him he needed to be in the temple.
In the dressing room someone asked how he was. It was Elder Dallin H. Oaks. He forced a smile and said everything was great. When he came out, Elder Oaks was waiting for him:
Brother, tell me how you are really doing.Dallin H. Oaks, as told by Timothy L. Farnes, “Divine Appointments,” October 2026
He listened, encouraged him, answered the question, and hugged him. Five years later, in Elder Oaks's office, President Farnes brought it up. Elder Oaks didn't remember it at all — and, seeing his disappointment, added: “But it’s what we do. Isn’t it?”
That he didn't remember is the point. A repairer of the breach is not someone who did a repair once and remembers it fondly. It is someone for whom stopping is ordinary enough to forget. President Farnes put the same thing about the Savior this way:
To Jesus, these people were not interrupting His mission. They were His mission.Timothy L. Farnes, “Divine Appointments,” October 2026
What I took from my dad’s lesson
As with Job, much of this came from my dad's weekly episode on Brother Miller’s Notes. The slow reading of beauty for ashes is his, as is the repairer of the breach as the thing to carry into the week, and the line that the fast is a transformation rather than a transaction.
If you take one thing
Isaiah's people thought God had stopped seeing them. He answers that his hand is not short, comes himself to bind up the brokenhearted, and then hands the healed his own work: the people who fast his way are called repairers of the breach. And when they do it, he says, Here I am. Being made whole is the start of a job, not the end of one.
This week, pick one: ask someone how they are really doing, and wait for the answer. Fast for someone by name. Or find one breach — a burden, a lonely person, a broken relationship — and repair it. The healed become the repairers.