Spend Yourself

The Scripture from Isaiah 58 kept coming up over and over for me while traveling last year.  It talks about injustice but I think it also spoke to my heart, going through my own time of healing, with the words from verse 8 which say, "Then shall your light break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up speedily."  And again down in verse 10 it says, "then shall your light rise in the darkness and your gloom be as the noonday." (ESV)

Whenever this portion of Scripture comes up, I revel in it. . .it is profound to me.  I blogged previously about the song "Justice and Mercy", with its lyrics coming straight from this passage.  This past weekend, I was reading a magazine that highlighted verse 10.  The difference was that it was from a different translation and they spoke about the first part of the verse, not the second part that I highlighted above.

For some reason, I was missing the "if" part of the statement before the "then".  Verse 10 in the ESV starts, "IF you pour yourself out for the hungry. . .THEN shall your light rise in the darkness."  But the translation from the magazine was from the NIV and said, "Spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry."

Spend yourself?  That can't be?  I spend money and I spend time with others, but can I really spend myself?  Do I want to spend myself?  Was does it look like to spend myself?  And on whom?  Who are the hungry - those without food, those without love, hungry for what?

These thoughts have been on my brain and I've been chewing on them.  To spend myself means that this is going to cost me something.  Part of me is going to be left behind in the process.  Can I afford to spend myself?  I afford not to spend myself?