The Blacksmith's First Commission

The first time twelve-year-old Samuel Whitfield stepped into his grandfather's forge in rural Tennessee, the heat nearly drove him back through the door. The furnace roared white-hot, and sparks scattered like angry stars across the soot-blackened walls. Samuel's grandfather, hands scarred from forty years of metalwork, stood unflinching before the blaze.

"Come closer," the old man said.

Samuel couldn't. His sneakers felt glued to the concrete floor. Everything in that shop reminded him how small he was — the massive anvil, the hammer he couldn't lift, the fire he couldn't face. "I don't belong here," he whispered.

His grandfather smiled, pulled a glowing rod from the coals, and laid it against a rough piece of iron. Under the heat, the metal softened. The impurities rose to the surface and fell away. What remained was clean, ready to be shaped.

"Nobody belongs here at first," his grandfather said. "The fire makes you ready."

That is exactly what Isaiah experienced in the temple. When he saw the Lord, high and lifted up, with seraphim shaking the doorposts with their cries of "Holy, holy, holy," the prophet crumbled. "Woe is me! I am undone!" He saw God's blazing purity and knew his own lips were unclean. But the Almighty did not leave him there. A seraph pressed a burning coal to Isaiah's mouth — not to destroy, but to purify. And once the fire had done its work, Isaiah heard the voice of God: "Whom shall I send?" The man who moments before couldn't stand now stepped forward: "Here am I. Send me."

God's holiness doesn't just expose what we lack. It burns it away — and then it sends us out.