The Operating Room Light

Dr. Margaret Chen had performed over three thousand surgeries at Johns Hopkins. Her hands were steady, her reputation sterling. But in the spring of 2019, she found herself on the other side of the table — gowned not in scrubs but in a thin hospital robe, staring up at the merciless brilliance of the operating room light.

"I never knew how exposed you feel under that lamp," she told her colleague afterward. "Every scar, every blemish, every imperfection — visible. You cannot hide anything from that light."

Isaiah knew that exposure. When he stumbled into the presence of the Almighty — the train of His robe filling the temple, seraphim shaking the doorposts with their cry of "Holy, holy, holy" — the prophet did not stand tall. He crumbled. "Woe is me! I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips." The blazing holiness of God did what every operating room light does: it revealed everything.

But here is the grace that changes the story. God did not leave Isaiah exposed on the table. A seraph flew to him with a burning coal, pressed it to his lips, and declared his guilt removed. The same light that revealed the wound provided the healing.

And then — cleaned, restored, fully known — Isaiah heard the voice: "Whom shall I send?"

His answer came without hesitation: "Here am I. Send me."

The holiness that undoes us is the same holiness that remakes us — and then sends us out.