Isaiah 6

Last night we read Isaiah chapter 6. The entire chapter, I find to be very moving and powerful. This is especially true when reading it out loud. When I read 6:8 I always think of the song Here I am Lord, which is a song that we sang last summer on the mission trip. Some days I feel close to God like I did on the mission trip, and other days it seems as though he is a million miles away. Why do we struggle to reach out sometime... What is so difficult about allowing other people into our lives... is it that we do not want them to see how messy our lives really are? How we struggle with some of the most mundane aspects of following Christ?

One of my best friends from high school moved to Dallas after graduation (or his parents did) and we went down to visit one weekend. I asked his dad how he like their new neighborhood (which was a neighborhood where all the house looked the same, and it had a mundane feel), he said, "I love it, I don't take to my neighbors and they do not talk to me..." Is this the attitude that the church is taking? Is the church somehow distancing itself from the word around it? I do not think that the church should embrace certain ideas because society has, yet, we must not be reclusive how is the church going to be a rock to someone if it is buried under the sand?

Isaiah 6 (NIV)
In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple. 2 Above him were seraphs, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. 3 And they were calling to one another: "Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory."
4 At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.
5 "Woe to me!" I cried. "I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty."
6 Then one of the seraphs flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. 7 With it he touched my mouth and said, "See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for."
8 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!"
9 He said, "Go and tell this people: " 'Be ever hearing, but never understanding; be ever seeing, but never perceiving.'
10 Make the heart of this people calloused; make their ears dull and close their eyes. [a] Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed."
11 Then I said, "For how long, O Lord?"And he answered: "Until the cities lie ruined and without inhabitant, until the houses are left deserted and the fields ruined and ravaged,
12 until the LORD has sent everyone far away and the land is utterly forsaken. 13 And though a tenth remains in the land, it will again be laid waste. But as the terebinth and oak leave tumps when they are cut down, so the holy seed will be the stump in the land."