Then.

Abiding in Hope

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You probably know that moment in Isaiah 6 where Isaiah sees God, right there in the temple where Isaiah has come to worship. The whole temple building shakes as Isaiah realizes God’s throne is right there in view. The hem of God’s glorious robe fills all the spaces and crevices in every direction, and soon smoke filters into that same space. Seraphs—angels—are in attendance on God; they hover, dart, wing, and call out to one another, above and around God, announcing:

Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;

the whole earth is full of his glory. (Isaiah 6.3)

And in his awe, Isaiah is aghast. He’s seeing God face to face—which according to age-old Hebrew tradition is a thing one cannot survive.[1] He feels the full force of his own smallness, sinfulness, insignificance in the face of God’s holiness. “Woe is me,” he says, or as The Message has it, “It’s Doomsday! I’m as good as dead!” (Isaiah 6.5) He recalls his own tainted speech and life, lived among people whose lives are similarly tainted, and he is undone.

Then…. 

I love that there’s a “then.” If this passage ended at verse 5, it would still be an amazing and true encounter with God, and we’d be reminded of all the things Isaiah experienced: the overwhelming holiness and glory of God, against which we are all so slight and flawed.[2] We would have accepted that lesson and read on to the next episode in which God’s presence collides with human frailty.

But in this case, at least, there’s a Then. A continuation of the story, in which God—through one of the seraphs—responds to Isaiah’s despair by giving him what he needs. One of them goes to the altar and brings a live coal with which to touch Isaiah’s lips, and thus to purify him. Isaiah doesn’t comment on what sounds rather fearsome and painful to me, but instead emphasizes what the seraph says, “Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out” (Isa 6.7b). 

A Then like this one happens pretty often in the Bible (with or without that word). Here are a few:

  • When Abraham says “Yeah, right, God, I’m a hundred years old and my wife is 90 and I’m gonna be the father of multitudes” (Genesis 17.17), THEN God clarifies the “yes” and the “when” and through whom (Sarai, now renamed Sarah) this is, truly, going to happen.
  • When Moses names every excuse in the book in response to God’s call in Exodus 3-4, THEN God responds (patiently, until God’s anger is kindled in Ex 4.14!) each time.
  • When God calls Gideon to deliver Israel through him (Judges 6), Gideon repeatedly expresses his weakness and his doubts in God’s power. THEN each time (and it’s a lot of times!), God (through an angel) gives Gideon the encouragement he needs to do as God has asked.
  • When Elijah flees from Ahab and Jezebel after besting the prophets of Ba’al, he comes to the end of his strength. He takes cover under a broom tree and falls asleep. And THEN God provides sustenance: “a cake baked on hot stones and a jar of water.” (1 Kings 19.6), and some important questions and conversation.
  • After Thomas has expressed his skepticism that Jesus has truly been raised (John 20.25), THEN Jesus comes the following Sunday and offers exactly what Thomas said he would need: “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe” (Jn 20.27).

Have you experienced such a “then”? A time when you were at the end of your rope and you found God ministering to you the exact thing you needed? when you were full of reasons and excuses and God answered every one of them? 

I hope so. You’ve experienced God’s presence in a powerful way, and then your own doubts and despairs have taken hold, out of questions, excuses, a sense of inadequacy, past happenings, and more. And suddenly it’s hard to hold on to what you saw of God, or heard from God, in that powerful experience. 

(In this season when some of us clergy are getting ready to move to new appointments, I wonder if this feels particularly real. Or maybe you’re watching other people get ready to move, but what you heard from God was “stay,” and that’s beginning to feel heavy on you. Or you’re a member or leader of a church caught up in these transitions, or you wish you were, and the heaviness of what’s before you is weighing you down. This “doubt and despair” experience can come from so many angles.)

Then…this just might be the spot where God is getting ready to show up, and give you what you need.

My own experience of God showing up has never been so vivid as the picture Isaiah paints. I do hear God “speak” sometimes—but I put that in quotes because it’s not so much a voice as words that respond to a question or a need, words I wouldn’t have said to myself. Sometimes it can be an actual voice—of a friend or spiritual guide—who says the thing God needed me to hear. I count that as “God showing up.” Addressing the need that threatened to make me forget or walk away from what I thought God was asking of me in the first place. 

And when that happens, suddenly—for us just like for Isaiah—the shortcomings, our smallness, our inabilities: None of this looms so large anymore. We get re-centered in what the seraphs were saying all along: 

The whole earth is full of God’s glory.

When I get centered again on that truth, everything seems possible. The whole earth. Filled. Which includes you and me.

Something like this “Then” happened, I think, at our recently completed United Methodist General Conference.[3] I wasn’t there, but I can attest that many approached this General Conference with real trepidation—largely based on past experiences when this gathering was combative and grueling and its outcomes grim. For this year’s General Conference to have yielded the real progress it did, God’s “THEN” was indubitably in play, with God reassuring many, many people: 

Yes, I know what’s come before. Yes, it’s been hard. But I’m not done yet with The United Methodist Church. I will be with you. Be assured this is not beyond you.

Thanks be to God for all who received the clarity to persist in that work.

Of course, the story doesn’t end there: The story of General Conference. Our own stories of times God has shown up to guide and hearten us. Those Biblical stories I mentioned. Isaiah’s own story. 

In each case you’ve got (1) God with us; (2) us in despair; (3) The first “then”: God getting us past our despair. 

But there’s another “THEN.”

In pretty much every case, what’s at stake is more than God with us, and us getting over our despair. After we’ve been buoyed, the story continues, with something God will ask us to do now.

The next “Then” in Isaiah’s telling (Isa 6.8a) happens this way:

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” 

Even when the call to action, as Isaiah will shortly learn, will be confounding and seemingly fruitless,[4] there’s another THEN.

God invites us heartened people into God’s work because God is still at work and that work happens through you and me and so many others like us. That’s true for us who are moving to new churches, and those who aren’t. It’s true for all of us leaders in The United Methodist Church because the work of General Conference doesn’t complete anything; it simply sets our course for the next faithful action, our ongoing essential work of being the church in our local communities, loving God and loving one another, and doing justice and bringing good news to the world. 

What a huge and glorious THEN for God to lay down for us.

What joy that we get to join in Isaiah’s answer (Isa 6.8b): “Here we are, God. Send us.”

We’ve been sent, friends. May it be so.

[1] See, for instance, Exodus 33.20.

[2] Like the closing chapters of the book of Job (chapters 38-42), for instance. Read those and see if they don’t feel a little like Isaiah 6.1-5, if they had stood alone!

[3] If you don’t know about General Conference and you are a United Methodist or someone interested in this denomination, take a look at this general website that has oodles of information for you. Or at least read this summary, which describes some of the high points.

[4] Look at Isaiah 6.9-13 and you’ll see what I mean. Some of us have been there, having followed a call where we wondered, “Now what’s the point of this thing God asked of me, if it was going to end this way?” Still, it was God’s call, not ours.

The Rev. Lee Roorda Schott serves as pastor of Valley UMC in West Des Moines, Iowa. This post is republished from "Abiding in Hope," a spiritual formation project of the Iowa Annual Conference. This content may be reproduced with full credit to the author and linked to the original post.