“Hey–Here I Am. I’m Right Here”
Reflections on Isaiah 65:1-9
Usually it is the prophet of God, like Isaiah and Samuel, or someone like mother Mary. They are the ones who humbly say to God, “Here I am. Send me.”
Isn’t it amazing when it is the LORD God saying it. “Hey, here I am!”
He says it because he is so utterly frustrated. The chosen are frozen in a posture of the victimized. Poor us. We are so put upon. See how we have suffered and see how we have been looking for God. We have looked everywhere and we have thought all the deep thoughts and God is nowhere to be found.
He must be dead.
He must be a figment of our imaginations.
And our imaginations have been so awesomely active, and nothing…zip.
We have sacrificed. We have burned loads of incense. We have even tried sitting in tombs and secret places.
We have tried EVERYTHING.
We have tried just about every ism—even fancy syllogisms—and…nada.
We have tried worship with more noise, more silence, more praise, more puppets, more preaching and less. We have tried religion with rigid rules and religion with no boundaries at all. And we are just about worn out from it all.
How disconcerting to hear, in the midst of it all, “Hey, here I am. Right here.”
While we were going to the ends of the earth, God was in the center all the time.
