"He says, 'But that's not a big enough job for my servant—
just to recover the tribes of Jacob,
merely to round up the strays of Israel.
I'm setting you up as a light for the nations
so that my salvation becomes global!'" (Isaiah 49:6)
I am a very wordsy person. I love words and I love the power that each individual cluster of letters can hold. I love grammar and sentence structure, too. So when I'm reading God's Word, I'll often come across a verse or sentence that I have to read several times because it just resounds so intensely within my word-loving soul.
"I'm setting you up as a light for the nations"
My prayer has always been that I be a lighthouse, not that I be shaped into one. I'd pray every day "God, make me a lighthouse." I wanted to be the way by which those who were "lost at sea", so to speak, found their way back to God's perfect and safe harbor. I never thought about the gradual process behind acquiring such light. And not even acquiring it, but becoming it.
I used to think that being a Christian meant being perfect because Christ was perfect. I used to believe that if people saw me mess up, then as a quasi-punishment, they could never see Christ in me. I relentlessly chased after perfection knowing the whole time that this was an impossible and futile task. But I soon realized that the imperfection that inherently manifests itself within me is what makes God so amazing. I had this epiphany one day when God totally "opened my eyes" while listening to the story that I'd heard countless times of how Jesus healed the blind man in John 9
"He said this and then spit in the dirt, made a clay paste with the saliva, rubbed the paste on the blind man's eyes" (John 9:6)
Jesus healed the blind man, that was all Him. But what was the segway by which He did so? Dirt and spit. Dirt and spit are nasty (some translations use dust, I like 'The Message'). There is nothing holy about either of the substances, and yet, He used them to perform a miracle that no one in that time could reasonably comprehend. And you know what we are as humans?
"God formed Man out of dirt from the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life. The Man came alive—a living soul"(Genesis 2:7)
God, I am dirt and the world is blind.
The complete beauty of our faith is that we can come to the Creator of the universe as we are. We are nothing. He chooses to use us, in our utter worthlessness, to perform His great and merciful actions. He is setting me up to be a light, I am in awe.
Lord I am humbled and renewed in Your spirit.
"Here I am, God, send me" (Isaiah 6:8)
