5C22.    Isaiah 6:1-2a, 3-8.    The people of Judah lived in great fear of the horrific terror of invading Assyrians.   Isaiah’s vision assures them that their God is infinitely more powerful that than any earthly force.  God is choosing Isaiah to be his prophet or spokesperson but Isaiah protests that he is totally unworthy.  God sends an angel to make Isaiah fit for the job.  As a result, Isaiah was able to say, “Here I am,” ”send me!”  It is God’s divine plan to use his human creatures as instruments of his divine will and so accomplish the result he wishes to achieve.

Luke 5:1-11.  After Jesus miraculously orchestrates the overwhelming catching of fish, Peter “fell at the feet of Jesus and said, ‘Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man,’”   Just as Isaiah had said, “I am a man of unclean lips,” Peter also recognized how undeserving and unworthy he was before the spectacular magnificent goodness of God.  In recognizing their own nothingness, they were putting themselves into the hands of the God who is everything.    They abandoned their sense of self-confidence to leave themselves open to live and act in the strength of God so to do what God had in mind for them to accomplish.  “When they brought their boats to the shore, they left everything and followed him.”  They emptied themselves, so Jesus could fill them with himself.

1 Corinthians 15:1-11.    Never to be the least because of the strength of the ego given him at birth, Paul declares, “For I am the least of the apostles, not fit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church.” “I have toiled harder than all of them; not I, however, but the grace of God that is with me.”  It is God that does the good work and we, by the grace of God, who cooperate with his working within us, accomplish his work.