Calling – Part 2

DAILY BYTE

Yesterday we started looking at God’s call as a source of hope and life for our world. The surprising but very good news is that when God’s call is heard and obeyed, when women and men give their lives to what God asks of them, there is truly a whole new creation that unfolds. The call of God taking root within ordinary people has the power to make all things new.

Tragically, God’s call is not always heard or obeyed. The pages of history and scripture are littered with the stories of those who have tried to turn aside from God’s call.

We think of people like Moses, Gideon, Jonah and Jeremiah who tried to duck and dive from God’s call staking a claim over their lives. The reasons that they gave for their reluctance and resistance sound strangely familiar. For they are the reasons we also use – I’m not equipped, I’m not sufficiently resourced, I’m not worthy, I’m too young, I’m too old, I don’t have the time, I don’t want to go.

Sometimes the resistance is expressed not all at once, but bit by bit, gradually over time, as people allow themselves to drift from God’s call until they find themselves living not out of the fiery passion of divine purpose, but out of the cold ash heap of mediocrity and irrelevance.

But I ask you, why would we settle for anything less than our highest calling?

Why would we not want to put these miraculous lives to magnificent purpose?

Why would we not risk everything to let our one chance at life be put to great and glorious good by an infinitely gracious God?

Maybe, like Jeremiah, we are just too aware of our own inadequacy. When he heard that God had appointed him a prophet to the nations, Jeremiah offers this somewhat panicked response, “But I don’t know how to speak, for I’m just a boy.”

Interestingly, God doesn’t even argue the point for it seems that Jeremiah is telling the truth. All that God says is, “Don’t SAY you’re just a boy. Because true though that may be, it is utterly irrelevant. It is irrelevant because you’ll go where I send you. You’ll speak whatever I command. So do not be afraid, for I am with you.

And then God touches Jeremiah’s mouth and declares that God’s very words, filled with endless creative and life-giving power, are now in him.

And so it is with us. In response to God’s call we offer our reasoned explanations as to why this is a bad idea, as if God is unaware of who we are in the first place and doesn’t really know what God’s doing. And many of our reasons are indeed accurate. But for one thing: in the eyes of God they are utterly irrelevant.

Let me say it as plainly as I can. If you’re seized by the call of God, of course you’ll feel inadequate, ill-equipped, unworthy. Get over it. Dare to believe that God is not limited by your limitations, and so neither should you. And remember that God’s call always always always comes with God’s gracious promise, “I will be with you.”

This is reason for great hope indeed.

PRAY AS YOU GO

Lord, we thank you for the lives of the countless women and men over the ages who have faithfully served you and poured out their lives to the glory of your name. May their example inspire us to heed your call and commit ourselves to your eternal purposes, for the sake of hope and healing for our world. Amen.

SCRIPTURE READING

Jeremiah 1:4-8

Now the word of the LORD came to me saying,
"Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
and before you were born I consecrated you;
I appointed you a prophet to the nations."
Then I said, "Ah, Lord God! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy."

But the LORD said to me,
"Do not say, 'I am only a boy';
for you shall go to all to whom I send you,
and you shall speak whatever I command you.
Do not be afraid of them,
for I am with you to deliver you,
says the LORD."