“Joanne” tells the story of her purpose in life. Expecting to have a large family, she found herself childless. For many years she carried grief in her heart. She decided to become a school teacher and devoted her life to working with teenagers. One day after class one of her students came to her with tears in her eyes and said, “Mrs._____you are like a mother to me.” At this moment, God spoke to her; Joanne realized his purpose for her life. She was rendered childless not as a punishment from God, but so that she could be more fully a mother to the hundreds of teenagers who enrolled in her math classes over the years.
Today we read a portion of the “diary” of Isaiah in which he talks honestly of his struggle with finding a purpose in life (Isaiah 49:1-6).
“…I thought I had toiled in vain, and for nothing, uselessly, spent my strength.”
He wondered if he had wasted his life. Then God allowed him to see himself from God’s vantage point.
“The Lord called me from birth, from my mother’s womb he gave me my name. He made of me a sharp-edged sword and concealed me in the shadow of his arm…You are my servant, he said to me, Israel through whom I show my glory.”
He began to realize that God was his Father even before he came forth from his mother’s womb. It was God himself who gave Isaiah his name. When we see the letters “iah”…these refer to “Yah-weh” the holy name of God. Isaiah was God’s child. From his earliest days God had trained his tongue to speak as a prophet. Little did he know that God was making him into a “new Israel”—a person who would make the light of God’s presence shine upon the earth.
“Yet my reward is with the Lord, my recompense with my God, for now the Lord has spoken who formed me as his servant from the womb.”
Now! It was at this moment that God revealed his purpose for Isaiah. Until that time Isaiah had to struggle with the thought that he had “toiled in vain.” Knowing God was his “recompense,” he did not have to look to the world or even to his own thoughts to find a purpose in life. At that moment he realized, like Jesus did at the Jordan River, that he was one with whom the Father was well pleased. God had not forgotten him, nor left him without a purpose in life.
Isaiah was chosen…
“That Jacob may be brought back to him and Israel gathered to him.”
God’s heart was rent when Israel became divided into two kingdoms and when his children were scattered across the earth. As a loving Father, he longed to bring his children together again and unite them as one family. Isaiah was to be God’s instrument in helping bring this about. He would have the privilege of consoling the heart of God.
And his call went even beyond helping to restore Israel to God.
“I will make you a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.”
This humble prophet, who struggled with feelings of uselessness, would, in God’s time, be a light so bright that he would shine out to all the earth to let all peoples know that God’s merciful love was available to them as well as to Israel. Isn’t it something that over twenty-five hundred years later, Isaiah’s light still shines among us Gentiles, as his words are proclaimed to Christians in every corner of the earth!
This week we are entering into that sacred moment in Jesus’ life in which he realized fully his purpose—that God’s salvation might “reach to the ends of the earth”—into every heart that calls upon his name.
As we try to unite ourselves with Jesus this week, we ask to be awakened to our unique purpose in life. How, specifically, does God want to show his glory to the world through me? In no way are our lives useless to God.
“For you are my hope O Lord; my trust, O God, from my youth” (Ps 71:5).
