Minute Meditations

”Here am I; send me.” And God said, ”Go, and tell this people, Hear ye indeed, but understand not; and see ye indeed, but perceive not.” Isaiah did go and preach to the people, but as God predicted, they heard without understanding and looked without seeing.

We, like Isaiah, live in times when few have ears to hear the word of God and eyes to see His glory, His warnings, or His signs of the times. The fact that few will see or hear does not lessen our duty to say, ”Here am I, send me.” God is still calling out a people for His name, one here and one there. The laborers are few. This is no time to be unemployed as a laborer for God. The work is there. The harvest is plenteous. What possible excuse can we give for standing idly by when there is so much work to be done? Oh, there are lots of. excuses we can give. As in the parable Jesus gave us, ”I have bought a piece of ground... another said I have bought five yoke of oxen, and another said, I have married a wife and therefore I cannot come.” These all have their counterparts in modern excuses. The piece of ground is often a beach house or mountain cabin or place on the desert or it can even be our garden at home. At any rate. we cannot go campaigning because Saturday is the only day we have to tend to it. The oxen can easily be our automobiles which instead of transporting us to the work of the Lord carry us over hill and dale in the pursuit of this world’s goods. Wives haven’t changed since the time of Jesus and often the husband or wife makes an excellent excuse for not doing what we didn’t want to do anyway.

When it comes to preaching the truth, to telling others of our hope, we often feel like Moses who told God, ”O my Lord, I am not eloquent.” But God replied, ”Who made man’s mouth? have not I the Lord? Now therefore go.”

The difference between those who go and those who find excuses for staying home from the Lord’s work is not that the one going feels adequate and the other inadequate but rather that the doers and goers do and go feeling that of their own selves they can do nothing but that if God be for them, then who can be against them. And so, with Paul they exclaim ”I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me” and away they go to do the best they can. Surprisingly they find that the more they try to do, the more they are able to do and though woefully inadequate, nevertheless with God’s grace the work gets done and the laborers learn and benefit as much or more than those to whom they have come to minister.

Paul tells us that he ”kept back nothing that was profitable unto you, but have shewed you, and have taught you publickly, and from house to house.” Are we keeping back anything from those around us because we are ashamed to go house to house? Are we keeping quiet instead of trying to teach for fear we might be asked something we can’t answer and thus be embarrassed? Are our feelings so important to us that we would rather preserve them than risk being shown up?

Paul said, ”I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth.” Are we? Jesus warned that some would b: ashamed of his Gospel and he said that ”whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation; of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”

If we follow Isaiah’s example, we will say ”Here am I, send me” and God will say to us ”Go and tell this people,” and soon Jesus wi11 say to us, ”Come ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.”