Little Faith

We just got back from Saratoga, and things are going okay. This has been a roller-coaster week – feeling normal, feeling gross, feeling normal, feeling gross, feeling normal…you get the picture.  I just haven’t had a lot of spare energy to update the blog. Not that it would have made especially good reading if I did.

In my reading I finally made it to chapter 6 of Isaiah in my Oswalt commentary. After nearly 200 pages of reading. That’s the chapter where Isaiah has a vision of God filling the temple. Isaiah is most challenged in this vision by God’s moral character (as opposed to his physical glory, which I would have expected to be most apparent). A fiery angel touches a live ember to Isaiah’s lips to purify him. Then God and Isaiah have an interesting dialog about sending. God asks ‘who can I send’ – and Oswalt’s interpretation of Isaiah’s response surprised me: Isaiah says ‘would I do’ – not the resolute ’send me’ that normally gets read into the passage.

It makes me feel better that Isaiah’s response to God was timid and unsure – because I think I can respond that way, with the little faith I have. And look what God did with Isaiah…he wrote one of the most beautiful and complex books in the entire bible, inspiring God’s people through dark and fearful times.

Would I do?