"HERE I AM" IN THE BIBLE

There are five pivotal moments in the Bible in which a person or group of people respond to God's call with the above statement. I would like to briefly recount each of them.

Exodus 3:4

This is the story of Moses seeing the burning bush in the wilderness and hearing God's voice issuing from it.

Durham: “Theophany and call are brought together in the narrative dealing with Moses for the same reason they are brought together in the narrative dealing with Israel at Sinai. Theophany describes the advent of God's presence; call describes the opportunity of response to that presence. Theophany provides both stimulus and authority for response; response, despite a choice, is virtually inevitable following theophany.”

Knight adds, “God accosts Moses on a working day, not at a festival, not at a moment of worship within the cult. So the God of whom ex[odus] writes is the god of secular human experience, of a working man, of life lived without ecstatic abnormal insights or visions.Thus, instead of this being a shocking and traumatic experience when the 'other world' suddenly impinges on his consciousness, Moses is not at all upset.”

“The whole concept of Christian calling derives from the belief that God has communicated with us personally, and has called us by name. If we forget this, the doctrine of election can become unrelated to our obedience, and so impersonal, abstract and forbidding.” (Cole)

I Samuel 3:4,6,8

When the boy Samuel is sleeping in the temple, he keeps being awakened by a voice calling his name. He assumes it is Eli summoning him, but Eli knows better and informs Samuel that it is the LORD instead, and that Samuel should listen to what He has to say.

Here are some insights by Francesca Murphy into what is going on here:

“Samuel begins to be the person God intends by being called and responding...But why is a classic prophetic call narrative used to characterize Samuel, who was hardly a classic prophet, like Isaiah, and what is it doing here, at the outset of Regum, when Samuel was not a king?”

“In fact, 1 Samuel sees the rise of the monarchy in Israel in the context of theological ethics.”

“In order to become a moral individual, a person, Samuel must be called out of the familial collective and enter a direct relationship to God. God does not, here, just call an individual to effect a change in Israel's culture: he creates an individual so to do.”

“The idea here, which enabled Israel to begin to rise above the tribal or collectivist principle, is that God's call separates a person from his or her culture, and this break with the internal social dynamic of a culture gives them the spiritual wherewithal to found a genuine community, spreading from and embedded in the work or task that is named in the divine call.”

Isaiah 6:8

The setting of this verse is when Isaiah sees a vision of God on His heavenly throne surrounded by seraphim. One of them touches Isaiah's tongue with a live coal followed by God's voice asking whom He should send to proclaim His word to the people. At that point, Isaiah volunteers by saying, “Here am I. Send me.”

Blenkinsopp notes, “The purification of the lips prepared Isaiah for his prophetic mission, which he accepted eagerly, unlike Moses (Ex 3.11), Jeremiah (Jer 1.6), and Jonah (Jon 1.3).”

“Now, for the first time, God speaks. It is as if Isaiah was not ready to hear before this moment, as if the possibility of service could not be appreciated until this time. But for whatever reason, God makes it plain that while spiritual experience is never merely a means to an end, neither is it an end in itself...It is very possible, in the light of 1 K. 22:19, that who will go for us is an address to the heavenly host, either visibly present or implied. That Isaiah is neither directly addressed nor coerced is suggestive. Perhaps it is so because Isaiah does not need coercion, but rather needs an opportunity to volunteer.” (Oswalt)

Acts 9:10

In this verse, a disciple named Ananias is contacted by God, at which point he responds, “Here I am, Lord.” Ananias is then commissioned to seek out the recently blinded Saul and preach the Good News to him.

“Ananias' response is magnificent. 'Here I am, Lord.' That's how to react on the Way. Here I am; here is my mind, my heart, my willingness, my guidable disposition. We can't get very far on the Way without that. Prayer is not lofty rhetoric; it's availability, reporting in for duty, expressing readiness for anything.” (Ogilvie)

Fitzmyer reminds us that “he [i.e. Ananias] would actually have been among those whom Saul intended to cart off to prison in Jerusalem. The Lord uses an opponent of Saul as a instrument in the latter's conversion.”

Acts 10:33

A minor variation of this phrase even appears a chapter later when the Gentile Cornelius receives a vision from God telling him to contact Simon Peter. Cornelius assembles his family and friends and tells Peter, “All of us are here.”

Stott says, “It was a remarkable acknowledgement that they were in God's presence, that the apostle Peter was to be the bearer of God's word to them, and that they were all ready and open to listen to it. No preacher today could ask for a more attentive audience.” In this, he is probably echoing F.F. Bruce's earlier words: “Did ever a preacher of the gospel have a more promising audience than this?”