Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I. Send me!”
If there is something I don’t really want to do, or maybe something I am nervous about doing, I have learned that I can be the queen of excuses. …I have too much on my plate. …I’m not equipped to be able to handle that. …Someone else is more qualified than I am. I am often reluctant to say yes and step into things that are unknown or uncertain.
I think that as we think about the Christmas story, we often have this somewhat idealized version of what happened. But when we drill down deeper, we find that it is a story filled with uncertainty. Mary and Joseph could have found a million excuses and given God a hard pass on their part of the Christmas story purely out of fear. But they didn’t. They chose faith and boldly said yes.
In today’s verse, Isaiah says yes to God before he even knows what God wants him to do. Let’s aim to have that kind of heart and that kind of willingness to step into whatever God asks us to do. To trust that God is in control and that His plan for us holds something greater than we can imagine. Greater than our fear and greater than our uncertainty. Let’s put our excuses aside and say yes.
