You Sneaky, Manipulative God...

God is so sneaky sometimes. I'm reading Isaiah 6, which is one of those inspire-me kind of passages. God is so sneaky with Isaiah, like border-line manipulative. Listen: "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!" Wait. Who is God asking? Isaiah is the only one in the room. God makes it seem all rhetorical and stuff, but it's not. This is a question only for Isaiah. God has a mission and purpose only for Isaiah, but he asks anyway and lets Isaiah really claim and own this.

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When I was in Costa Rica, I got to help out with a ministry in La Cuenca (which I'll describe through the words of another short-term missionary I met down there). "La Cuenca is dangerous, violent and so broken. For a while before I arrived, nobody was allowed in the area due to all the issues with drugs, gangs, and violence. The three missionaries I worked with in La Cuenca, Hugo, Magaly and Fernando, have been returning to this area for the past five years via a two hour bus ride and no salary. Even though the three are all part of growing families, they receive under $100 per month in support" (Caroline's blog).

One time while I was at La Cuenca, I went with Hugo to visit a family. I stepped into a house no bigger than a dumpster and no cleaner. All around me, a car door and scraps of metal and wood made for walls and ceiling, which blocked no rain during the rainy season. Making small canyons in the uneven dirt floor, toilet and bath water from homes higher up the hill ran between our feet as we talked. The five children had long dropped out of school, and the oldest daughter fumbled with a pot of rice cooking over a log fire just outside the door. Prostitution is stealing these girls and gangs have already taken the boys. When you're an uneducated and unemployed and unmarried mother of five children, what are your options?

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This is the world we live in. I hear God saying, "Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?" and I know God's looking at me, because I'm the only one in the room. "Here am I, God! Send...oh, wait. We'll finish this conversation later. I'm about to be late to class."