://answering the call

I don't know whence comes this common notion that being a Senior in high school is something enviable. It's a dreadful amount of work, coupled with an overwhelming lethargy and the responsibility that comes with being an autonomous adult. Add to that the burden of fleshing out your future--and if you have a relationship with Jesus Christ, fleshing out your calling--and it is, generally speaking, a very frustrating epoch.

For me, there is always a very legitimate fear of letting my own desires interfere with my calling. There is always a possibility of my own caprice sending its impish signals into the airwaves to scramble my legitimate calling (which I should hope is scheduled to broadcast rather soon).

I can't imagine that I'm alone in this fear. Anyone reasonably mature in Christ should want to answer their calling instead of fabricating their own. It's a tough balance to strike, but I think the more sensible of us know that there are much greater benefits, fruits, and blessings to going where the Spirit is already than contriving to go some place and expecting the Spirit to catch up. I regard such judgment as prudent, but we can lead ourselves into a pernicious trap, if we are not mindful.

There is always a danger of becoming paralyzed waiting for a calling. We let opportunities pass us by, and justify our passivity by saying to ourselves, "Well, that's not my calling". We sit and wait to hear the call that God has for the greater scheme of our lives--and attentively we wait, perhaps--but in becoming so focused on the big picture, many of us miss the day-to-day calling to serve and to give and to be humble.

I consider the recent calamity in Japan, and all of sacrificial people that are aiding in the recovery come immediately to my prayers. This is a category of people--not all of them Christians, I'm sure, but nevertheless--who are answering the day-to-day call to love and to bear another's burden. Could I even imagine myself going into a country where there is death and ruin and radiation all around me? I am ashamed to say that my own selfish sense of self-preservation compels me to say no, even though "there is no greater love than this: that a man lay his life down for his friend". In any event, I would likely try to excuse myself by saying, "I don't feel called there".

And yet I am! We all are! We are, to a man, called to love, to sacrifice, to pray, to suffer ourselves when even one member of Christ's body suffers. I'm not proposing that we all make a quick hop across the Pacific to aid in the Japanese relief effort--though what a great display of Christian generosity and openhandedness that would be--but I am exhorting my readers not to miss the opportunities that are presented to them day by day.

Don't shrink back from the calling that lives and breathes from moment to moment. Cultivate willingness and a reflex to say "yes" to God. "Prepare your mind for action", as Peter writes (and that phrase has an interesting Greek idiom that would be a rich topic for another time). Be ready, so that when the time comes, you will not be of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who believe and are saved.

Stephen