The Scripture that was the foundation for our week in Alaska was taken from Isaiah 6:1-8. In verse 8, God asks, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?"
Isaiah's response was, "Here I am. Send me!"
Driving back from North Pole to Anchorage on the last day of our mission trip, our group stopped at the Denali National Park. For me the highlight of the park was the dogsled demonstration. And during this demonstration, it was as if God were reconfirming the message of the trip.
On the video, you can hear all of the 32 dogs in their kennels barking as the ranger chooses dogs to be hitched up to the sled for the demonstration. What you don't see, is that prior to this, all the dogs were lethargic, most were sleeping.
But when the time came for some of them to be hitched up to the sled, they all seemed to wake up and started barking! It was as if all of them were yelling, "Pick me! Pick me!" The dogs were excited because they wanted an opportunity to do the thing which they have been bred.
(For the animal lovers, prior to retrieving the dogs, the ranger explained that the dogs' necks are really strong and being pulled in this manner does no harm to the dog. The dogs get so excited to be put on a sled that they might inadvertantly pull the ranger off her feet and cause injury.)
For some reason, we humans are different. We don't want God to pick us. And what that ultimately means is that we don't want to do the things for which God made us. We want to do our own thing and we agonize over why our lives don't go the way we think it should go.
Only when we completely surrender our lives to God and allow him to use us for the task for which we were created will we truly experience the joy that God has for us.
What will it take for you to learn the lesson that these sled dogs have already learned?
