"I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received." - Paul, in Ephesians 4:1
"The call of God does what the call of man cannot; it wakes us up; it raises the dead." -- John Piper
"People often ask me what it "looks like" when a person has "found their calling." Those eyes ... it's clearly in the eyes. These are the eyes of Calling. Commitment. Compassion. Determination. Grief. Holy discontent. Passion beyond words. Sacrifice. Surrender. " -- Jim Spivey
I met this woman in the picture a year and a half ago in a coffee shop in the Woodlands, TX, north of Houston. It was before she took this trip to Africa. A trip she was born to take, to initiate and enact a mission that she was inside of her and wouldn't let her go.
I dare you to gaze at this picture for more than 60 seconds without having something stir in heart. Something deep. Something powerful and invading and inconvenient. The something won't be tame, or logical, or reasonable, or attainable. It won't be "fundable", practical, or sensible.
But it will be something. It will be calling.
But don't worry. You can take your eyes off of it and cast them on something attainable, medicating, or adrenaline-producing the minute you can't stand it any more. Just look at your check-book, your bills, your to-do list as it is currently written. Just look around you at all the company you have doing mundane, repetitive, non-life-saving chores and feel affirmed in your mediocrity. Do whatever you want...but please, please...DON'T be ridiculous.
Like this woman...Melissa. She's ridiculous.
And just look at her. I dare you. And I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling that you will receive. Here's what Melissa says she is doing in that picture...
"Whatever He has in store for me in the area of service involves my whole family and extended community. As I continue to develop my ministry in this country, helping women just like me and children just like mine until our “schooling” is complete, I am being called to create a family-based mission in Africa, where AIDS, ignorance, poverty, and starvation are decimating families. All of my resources and capacities to embark on this mission will be supplied through prayer and God’s grace, the cornerstones of my life, at exactly the right time."
3 comments:
Brian,
A very powerful piece. This made me think. (Also like the Piper quote). Thanks.
Even in a photograph, she makes me want to look down in shame. My face alternates in Christmas colors: flushed red with embarrassment at my comfort; tinged with green envy at her "ridiculous" fanaticism.
Thanks for this challenge. There are so many opportunities to share Christ with the world. For a couple thousand years now, the field has been white for the harvest, but the workers are few. And even if people really cannot go or are not called to go and hold a child in their arms or give medical care to AIDS patients or translate the Bible into a language that's never been written down before . . .there are still ways to be a part of what God is doing in the world. There are ways to serve in our neighborhoods. There are ways to provide financially for those who are going outside our neighborhoods. There are ways to encourage and pray for those who are leaving jobs and homes to go where He has called. We need all parts of the Body fully functioning so we can follow the leading of our Head.
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