God longs for us to respond as did the prophet Isaiah when he heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” The Beloved looks forward to our coming with open arms and an open heart to serve where the Holy One needs us to incarnate God’s love to others. Isaiah didn’t hesitate; immediately he said, “Here I am; send me!”

Unfortunately, so many of us have gotten so good at not hearing God’s call through our lack of expectation, our lack of attention, our lack of listening that we have blocked our opportunity of response. Our barriers to our hearing may arise from fear, fear of where God might send us, of unknown places we don’t want to face, not only externally, but internally as well. Or perhaps they come from our lack of trust in God, in the Beloved’s providential care here and now. Or maybe it’s our life-consuming busyness that closes our ears and becomes our biggest barrier.

Our psalmist, however, knows the he can trust the Holy One to be with him in all the vicissitudes of his life as he concludes: “The Lord will make good his purpose for me.” Job too came to know the same as he acknowledged: “. . . no purpose of [God’s] can be thwarted.” (Job 42:2b) Does the truth of those scriptures resonate with us today? As I’ve previously mentioned in “Threads of Grace”, I have a friend who says that it may be that his one purpose in life is to smile at the clerk in the grocery store who’s having a bad day. God’s purpose for each of us may be big or small; it may be new every day or one for a lifetime. No matter our purpose, our call, we can trust the Holy One to equip us to carry it out just as God did the prophets and the apostles of old. The Beloved is ever patient and keeps calling to us until we are ready to respond, “Here I am; send me!”