Somewhere along the way, you’ve gotten an assignment you didn’t want. Someone in authority handed it to you – and there you stood, wanting with everything in you to hand it back.

In that instant, you could: (a) refuse the assignment, (b) delegate it to someone else, (c) plead to be relieved of the assignment, and/or (d) do it resentfully and halfheartedly.

Okay, there is a fifth choice, which you may not even consider until you’ve tried at least one of the above. It is: Accept the unwanted assignment, and seek to do it well.

Oh my, does that take grace.

In school, we learned tricks for getting around assignments. Many people have spent lifetimes perfecting this art. But though the teacher may believe we read the book when we really skimmed the Cliffs Notes, though the boss may think we created what we really found on the internet, it’s a different story when God gives the assignment.

You can try to fool him, but I wouldn’t recommend it.

***

Imagine you’re a member of a prestigious family, a cousin to the President. You’ve held a minor political office, and people are throwing your name around in connection with a very sought-after position.

Suddenly, God gives you the following assignment:

Shout with the voice of a trumpet blast;
tell my people of their sins!

Your political counselors tell you, “Not a smart move.” Your friends and family tell you, “Not a smart move.” Your own brain tells you, “Not a smart move.”

But way back in Old Testament days, when God told Isaiah that very thing, a man who might have enjoyed political stardom didn’t ignore the assignment, hand it off, plead for God to give it to someone else or use passive-aggressive behavior to let God know his displeasure.

Isaiah accepted the assignment. And he didn’t do the bare minimum needed to get by. For 60 years, he announced wonderful, encouraging messages from God. And also, when the Lord gave him hard messages, he did not hold back. Oh no. He trumpeted those too.

Tradition holds that he died when a king who did not want his atrocities labeled as sin had Isaiah sawn in half.

***

One Sunday afternoon in February 2004, I was driving home to Oklahoma City from Ft. Worth. My body felt weary; my heart, heavy. I was using the drive time to pray.

For six years, I had been the state women’s leader for my denomination. Behind the façade in my own church system, I had glimpsed much that distressed me, much that disoriented me, much that Scripture says does not please God.

But that month, something had shifted. What I had been glimpsing, witnessing and pondering had begun to turn, in fury, on me. That day as I drove, I felt the shift, yet had no clue what it boded.

Just nine days later, I would be blindsided by the abuse that erupted against me. I would be stunned when Christian leaders I knew and trusted – women and men – spearheaded the abuse.

I had traveled about halfway home when I realized I needed gas. In rural southern Oklahoma, I pulled off the interstate and filled up. As I stepped back into my car, frappuccino in hand, a Scripture reference came to mind out of nowhere. Not a verse. Just the “address”: Isaiah 58:1.

Curious to see what it said, I pulled my Bible out of my briefcase and looked it up. The words leapt up at me from the page:

Shout with the voice of a trumpet blast;
tell my people of their sins! (TLB)

Sitting in my car at that gas station, I began to cry.

Oh, Lord, not this assignment.

Only a week earlier, I had stuck my toe in that water. Standing before women whom I had given my all to serve, I read a Bible passage in which God cries out to his people who have persisted in dishonoring and rejecting him. I read his plea:

Return to me and I will return to you, says the Lord of hosts. (Mal. 3:7 ESV)

Afterward, one woman wrote me an anonymous note. “You can’t open a rose with a sledge hammer,” she said.

***

Our Lord sees when tenderness is needed, and he is wonderfully gentle, stunningly kind. He knows we like warm and fuzzy, chocolate and flowers. He offers every one of us a deeply intimate love relationship.

Yet sometimes, his love stuns us. For he also sees when the hearts of his people have become hard, when the challenge at hand is not about opening a rose.

And he is just as wonderfully persistent in seeking to break through and to clear out whatever blocks his people from knowing, loving, honoring and following him.

In Jeremiah 23:29, he says:

My message is like a fire that purges dross. It is like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces. I, the Lord, so affirm it! (NET)

When the Lord sees his people running together toward disaster, he throws down the bouquet and trumpets the truth. He confronts our rebellion. He shatters our illusions of self-sufficiency.

Sometimes, he speaks through people to people, to urge, “Wake up!” When he does, some may hear the cry and come to their senses. But others may do everything in their power to silence the one sounding the alarm.

That winter afternoon as the sun set, I sat in my car, staring at Isaiah 58:1.

Oh. Lord. Not. This. Assignment.

Exposing sin – and especially sin that has become entrenched in our lives, our generations, our church systems – may well be the most unwanted assignment. Still, the God of relentless love seeks people who will accept it.

Sometimes, he finds them at gas stations.

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I published the original version of this post as a Perspective newspaper column, February 13, 2004 – less than a week after the trip it describes. I published the same piece with minor changes, as Snapshot 7 in Focused Living in a Frazzled World. This revision includes details not included before.

Image by Rudy and Peter Skitterians from Pixabay