The Great Physician

"Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and convert, and be healed. Then [Isaiah] said, Lord, how long? And He answered, Until the cities be wasted without inhabitant, and the houses without man, and the land be utterly desolate..." Isaiah 6:10, 11

When Isaiah cried that he was a man of "unclean lips," God immediately met his need (Is. 6:6, 7). Then when Isaiah cried that he was in the midst of people of unclean lips, God immediately...brings desolation? abandonment?
Why does God not come and heal? Is God cruel? No, it is because there are some things that do not need healing; they need removal. Scars need healing; a tumor needs to be removed.
We are seeing here the two sides to the Great Physician: "...I wound, and I heal..." (Deuteronomy 32:39). Sometimes God will gently soothe our wounds with the balm of Gilead. Other times He does the wounding; He cuts right through us so He can hack away at what's killing us. Whether He wounds or heals, however, it all works for our good.
There was a part of Israel that did not need healing, people that were the source of corruption and deadness; that part needed to be "wasted," "desolate," "removed," and "forsaken" (Is. 6:11, 12). We forget that a physician not only prescribes and administers medicine, but also performs surgery, which is a type of wounding. So it is the same with the Great Physician. Sometimes, God's healing comes in the wounding. Remember, the greatest healing came from the greatest wounding (Isaiah 53:5).
"But yet in [Israel] shall be a tenth, and it shall return...as an oak, whose stump remains when it is cut down: so the holy seed shall be the stump thereof." (Isaiah 6:13) Sometimes there must be a pruning of the branches; other times, the whole tree must be cut down so it can start over. In addition, even the pruning is not guaranteed to be pleasant: either it is done by the gentle hands of the gardener or by a storm that tears the dead branches loose. Likewise, sometimes the only true healing is the wounding that cuts out the deadness so what is alive can grow again.
As the Great Physician, God will heal your wounds and get the deadness out. Isaiah's lips needed only to be covered ("purge" in verse 7 means to "cover" or "atone"); the people needed the desolation that gets the deadness out. God has no qualms with getting His hands dirty, whether it be in regards to you or in regards to others.
"And He said, Go, and tell this people..." (Is. 6:9). God may want to use you to get the deadness out of others as well as use you to heal. When it comes to being used by God to wound, or if we are seeing someone being wounded by God, we must not become what Oswald Chambers called "amateur providences," i.e., we suddenly think we have a higher moral sense than God and we cry, "They shall not suffer!" They must if they are to be whole.
How many times have we stood in the way of God's healing for us (and others) because we refuse to partake in the wounding that brings the healing?