Here Am I

"In the year that King Uzziah died,,,"  Isaiah "saw the Lord on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of His robe filled the Temple."  (Isaiah 6:1)  It was also the year Isaiah's life changed.  Prior to that moment, he was a priest in the Temple.  He did Temple stuff.  He handled the holy stuff that pointed people toward the presence of God.  But, after that moment came and went, he was no longer a priest, but a prophet.  His world centered not midst the holy stuff of the Temple,  but out midst the noisy city and hard countryside where men and women lived and sweated and died.   Instead of offering sacrifices which caused those present to feel better, he became a preacher who spoke words that threatened the comfort zone of all who heard.   

When the vision of that day was about gone, the Lord spoke asking, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?"  So caught up in God's glory was he that he dared to say, "Here am I, send me."  (Isaiah 6:8)  It was a word not so different than the word Moses heard when God spoke from the burning bush, but in Isaiah there was no hesitation, no hunting an excuse not to go, only a willingness to do the bidding of the Almighty.  And even as Moses was called to engage the brokenness of the world, so was Isaiah called to walk midst a broken and rebellious people.     

When God calls us to service it is always to a world that is in need of His Word, His presence, and His grace.  And, the world which He calls us to engage may not be as big as the world of injustice He set before Moses, or as big as the world of a nation bent on ignoring God, but on a smaller world where people we know are engaged in relationships that are impoverished by a lack of the spirit of Jesus. To hear the call of God to go is to know that He has something specific in view that needs a touch of His love and grace.  And when He shows us the brokenness, we must then decide if we will follow the example of Isaiah and say, "Here am I, send me."