Here am I; send me

Isaiah's call does not begin with a commission. It begins with a collapse. In the year the king dies, the temple fills with a vision too large for the room: the LORD high and lifted up, the train of His robe flooding the floor, the seraphim crying holy, holy, holy until the doorposts shake and the house fills with smoke. And the first thing out of the prophet's mouth is not eagerness but horror. Woe is me, he says, for I am undone. The vision has not flattered him; it has unmade him. A man of unclean lips, dwelling among a people of unclean lips, and now his eyes have seen the King. Only after that — after a coal from the altar touches his mouth and the guilt is taken away — does he hear the question, whom shall I send? The undone, cleansed man can finally answer it: here am I; send me. Notice the order, because it never changes. The vision of God breaks the old self apart before it ever hands the new self its work. Isaiah is unraveled in the holy presence, and only then is he sent.

We want our callings to arrive as affirmation — confirmation that we are competent, ready, fit for the task. But a true encounter with the holiness of God does not affirm you first; it undoes you first. It shows you, against the blazing purity of the One on the throne, exactly how much of your self-assurance was never silver. And that undoing is not a detour around your vocation. It is the doorway into it. The man who has not been brought to woe is me is not yet ready to be trusted with here am I, because he will go in his own strength and on his own authority, and that is precisely the thing the vision burns away. So if your upheaval has stripped you of the confidence you used to lead with — if you feel more undone than equipped — do not read that as disqualification. The unraveling before the holy God is the very thing that fits you to be sent. Woe is me comes first, and it is supposed to.