It still irks me a bit when I think
back to starting in this journey of ministry. As I discerned my call and
started the official candidacy process and my studies, I was often asked to
define what I felt God's call was. This question seemed to expect a direct
answer, and well, I like direct answers so I was happy to oblige. I would talk
of my call to be a local church pastor in the Baltimore-Washington Conference.
I love scholarly endeavors, I love traveling, but I felt quite sure that was
where God was calling me. Direct answer, done.
The problem was that some people
didn’t really want a direct answer. Or they supposed that my ability to
actually answer the question they asked evidenced a narrow idea of what God
could do. “But you know,” they would reply, “God’s call can change.” Well,
sure. I mean, that’s one of the most unnecessary things to say. It’s about like
telling a parent whose child is a year old, “Well, you know, they grow up.”
Wow. Thanks for that little bit of astounding insight.
The FACT that God’s call most often
evolves over time does not negate God’s call upon our lives at any one time. I believe
we can be confident of God’s call on our life at one moment while also being
confident that call WILL CHANGE. That does not, however, give us license to
always live in the future and ignore the present. Indeed, I am pretty sure that
whatever God’s call for me in the future will be, it is largely predicated or
at least nurtured by what God’s call for me has been to this point.
God’s call changes. But we do not
serve in chaos. We are, I believe, expected to play the hand we’ve been given—play
it well even though we know tomorrow, next week, next year, it will be a
different hand.
We can get into trouble when we
cannot balance God’s call today with God’s call tomorrow. Some people live
always for what’s next. For pastors, this can be a dangerous undertaking as
experts say pastors are liable to try to pastor their current church like they
would expect to their next one (pretending it’s larger than it really is and
failing to structure ministry appropriately). There are also those who become
to doggedly stuck in their current (or previous calling) that they never really
step up to the plate to see what God is doing next. When we are told that
without vision the people perish, I think we’re being given an insight into
what can happen when leaders and people aren’t looking to see what God can do
next.
I’ve been using the Common Prayer
devotions for a while now, and today’s reading continues in the story of Ruth. The
passage starts with Ruth 1:19-22. What an incredibly packed few verse this is.
And how God’s call for these women who dramatically has and is changing here.
Naomi has lost her son, and is in such sorrow she has a new name. Still
mourning, she moves. Ruth goes with her—think about this—not long ago she was a
young married woman. One hopes happily. But now that call is totally changed.
She takes the laudable step of going with her mother-in-law, giving up
everything she’s known. The story which follows indeed tells of a big new call
on her life. That call would not have been possible without her first marriage
(which ends tragically), but through that she is tied into this Jewish family.
And having been tied in, she will become married to Boaz. And she will become
an ancestor of Jesus.
God’s call—or, rather, how we experience
God’s call—is always changing. Faithfulness requires not dogged commitment to
one narrow call, but a loyalty to the One who calls us—wherever that call may
take us and however it may change and evolve in our lives.
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