The Weight of an Empty Room

Marcus Webb had written his resignation letter three times. The small congregation in Huntsville had dwindled to thirty. The budget was nearly gone. His faith felt thin and performative. On a Tuesday morning in January, he slipped into the empty sanctuary to collect a few books from the pulpit — nothing ceremonial, just an exit.

The old pipe organ had been left running from Monday's choir rehearsal, and a single sustained note hummed through the floorboards beneath his feet. January light cut through the east windows in long amber shafts. Marcus stood in the aisle, briefcase in hand, halfway between staying and leaving.

Then something shifted.

The air grew heavy — not oppressive, but weighty, the way the atmosphere charges before a long drought finally breaks. He set his briefcase down on the front pew. He removed his coat. He knelt, and he wept — not from sadness, but from smallness. From the sudden, undeniable awareness that the room was not empty at all.

He stayed there twenty minutes. When he rose, he left the resignation letter on the pew and walked to his office. He sat down and began to write a sermon instead.

This is the movement of Isaiah 6. The prophet enters the temple in the year Uzziah died — in grief, in national chaos, in personal smallness — and discovers the room is not empty. The Lord is there, high and lifted up, and the seraphim are crying out His holiness. When the burning coal touches Isaiah's lips and the guilt is taken away, one question remains: Whom shall I send?