Isaiah ben Amoz receives this vision in the year that King Uzziah died — roughly 740 BC, at the moment Judah's longest-reigning king was suddenly gone and Assyria was rising in the north. The throne in Jerusalem had emptied; Isaiah is shown the throne in heaven, which has not. His original audience is a kingdom about to be told they will not listen, and a prophet who must keep speaking anyway. The call comes after the seraphim, after the coal, after the cleansing of the lips. Volunteering precedes commission only because mercy precedes both.

From the writers we read together

Teresa of Ávila

Spanish Carmelite reformer and Doctor of the Church (1515-1582)

Teresa reformed a tired order on tired feet. She was nearly fifty when she began founding the discalced houses, traveling rough Spanish roads in a covered cart, negotiating with bishops, writing prayers between arguments. Her famous lines about Christ having no hands but ours are not poetry; they are a job description she was living. The throne room vision Isaiah saw is the same one she insists every Christian works under. The seraphim are still crying holy. The question whom shall I send is still in the air. Teresa's contribution is to refuse the daydream that someone else, somewhere holier, will hear it.

She also knew — better than most — that send me is said by people who have just had their lips touched. Isaiah does not volunteer in the first verse of chapter six; he says woe is me. Only the cleansed mouth offers itself. Teresa's whole interior castle is built on this order: God comes in, God burns through, and only then does the soul become useful to anyone. If your send me feels far away today, the answer is not to manufacture zeal. It is to stand where the coal can reach you.