Now the LORD said to Abram, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed."
-Genesis 12:1-3
My experience of call has been that we almost always talk about call to, rather than call away from. Biblically, though, I can identify an awful lot of calls away. Abram away from Ur, Moses and the Israelites away from Egypt (technically that one was to the promised land, but when you're wandering in the desert for 40 years, I think we can count this one as feeling more like a "from" than a "to"), all of the apostles.
I mention this to remind all of us that God is in the leavings and the endings, and not just in the new beginnings. When we're leaving, God doesn't offer to meet us at the other side. God doesn't tell us to call once we're free from our current entanglement. Setting things aside, leaving, making changes-- sometimes those are the acts of faithfulness, even more so than taking things up.
9.17.2008
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"So keep fightin' for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don't you forget to have fun doin' it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin' ass and celebratin' the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was."
-Saint Molly Ivins
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Amen. Blessings, Mrs. M.
ReplyDeleteI've been spending time with Moses at the bush that is not on fire this week, sometimes it is the unexpected that calls us away from what we consider our normal lives. I like this angle of pondering what we have left or what we need to leave. Who knows remembering some things we have left behind in our past may draw us back to what brought us to God
ReplyDeleteI wonder if a difference in age is relevant here. My call to ministry, while definitley a call TO, has also been hugely a call FROM. When you have a settled family, extended group of friends, home and career, a life that you have been building for 30 years, there is a lot to move FROM. Perhaps that is one of the reasons for the story of Abraham and Sarah -- so that we could recognize the power of past moorings and present comfort that we must leave.
ReplyDeleteOf course, for me personally, now, who knows what any of it meant/means...