Calling

There are times when writing a sermon seems to challenge me to take a leap of faith and also expose something of who I am and how I became that person. Writing these sermons is fascinating and yet at the same time there is this fine line that you want to follow. You want to tell enough so that the point comes accross clearly but you don't want to burden your congregation with details of your life they really don't need nor want to hear.
The reason for writing a very personal sermon is on the other hand the fact that somehow your most personal experiences with God seem to carry something that very many others seem to recognize. A great example of that kind of writing is Henry Nouwen or for that matter the blogger whose courage in giving himself to his readers I admire to no end, rlp. I am no where close to these gifted theologians and writers but in my own way I try to be as genuine, honest and transparent as I possibly can.
This past Sunday had to do with special times of God's calling and I chose to write about that from the perspective of an individual's experience and not from a communal perspective.

Have you had a moment where you knew this is it? A moment that you knew is going to determine your life to follow forever after? I haven’t. Or to be more exact I have had many but I have never really sort of gotten it during those moments. Obviously when you stand in front of important men of church and say yes to becoming a priest you’ve made a life altering decision. And when you say, again in front of a priest that I do which makes you a wife to your husband that pretty much means a permanent change in your life, too.
My problem is perhaps that I am kind of expecting to hear in my heart God say something like Moses said to His people:
“See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse: the blessing, if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I am commanding you today; and the curse, if you do not obey the commandments of the Lord your God, but turn from the way that I am commanding you today, to follow other gods that you have not known.”
Now the thing is of course that I have no idea how I would behave if anything like that did happen. I like to think that I would opt for the blessing but honestly I don’t know weather it is wise to be sure I would and I don’t think I am being pretentiously humble here either. I just think that it all is - I mean my life – such a miracle filled experience that I often feel I have had very little to do with how it turns out.
Let me try to explain. I feel that most all of my important decisions are decisions where I feel I had no other choice. I feel extremely blessed in that it seems that many of the big ones have been decisions that have given me joy, love and when it’s been hard perhaps even a bit of wisdom. I’ve taken those decisions, yes, but somehow it just feels that taking credit for them would be wrong.
Don’t get me wrong, though, I do not believe in predestination in the sense that I really don’t have to take any responsibility and everything will nonetheless go exactly as it should and God intended. On the contrary, many of you know that I talk about taking responsibility a lot and I mean it, too. I firmly believe that God wants us to stand on our own two feet and not waver as we face our lives and Him. But this is exactly where He comes in, too. If I trust that what I want, need and desire is important to God then He will also be there to help me make the right decisions. It is I making the decision but it is He paving the path toward figuring out what needs to be done.
I was taught a long time ago that God does not test us in that He would give us just a moment to make a life altering decision. If He wants us to do something, to change something or to commit to something He gives us time to understand it. And if the first time around we are particularly dense to get His point, He will continue to call us. Often He will do this very gently but admittedly sometimes we’re so slow to get the point that He needs to press His point somewhat more.
The thing is that a sense of urgency and worry about weather one is doing God’s will can and does get very stressful. It is important to remember that God is not limited by the constraints of time. I’ve said this before and will continue to say it: God has all the time in the world.
The thing with time is that God is present in the now. And it is in the now that He calls us to be with Him, to listen to Him and to say yes to Him. This yes is an all encompassing yes. It is not just saying yes to God’s plans for us or accepting that He is who He is but is saying yes to the very heart of God, to who He reveals Himself to be. The point? The point is that God’s calling for our lives is not separated from everything else. God’s calling for you is what follows from your love and relationship to God as naturally as the sunset follows the evening.
My husband and I talked about this just today and there are two examples I would like to tell. The other has to do with a time in my life that lasted almost three years and kept me away from the church for that time and the other about how I ended up standing in front of you.
In the first case for half a year God took every opportunity to tell me about what it means to enter a desert in your spiritual life. I kept encountering that thought and eventually I started to suspect that something was about to change in my life. A day came that all of what I had based my faith on came tumbling down. It may sound frightening but somehow I was prepared for it. I had been told over and over again that God will never abandon me. So, even if I couldn’t hear Him I knew He was there and as time went on I started to hear Him again. In the meanwhile I grew up. Finally.
From that process followed eventually that I re-entered the Faculty of Theology. I had no intention of becoming a priest at all; horrible working hours, weird clothing, not to mention becoming an odd ball in the dating world or for that matter the world in general. God did not have a see-I-am-setting-before-you-today-a-blessing-and-a-curse-discussion with me. But He did have a talk with me at the end of which all of my reasons for not considering priesthood had neatly been cleared away. With those gone and with a couple of rather well made points in favour of priesthood the decision became very easy. Within a month I knew for sure that this is what I wanted and that I just might like it, too,
God’s plans for us will lead us to most amazing places. Some of them are fascinating others frightening and difficult but what is sure is that you’re never ever left alone and you will be lead to more joy, love and wisdom than you ever expected.