Saturday, July 4

Today’s Readings: Psalm 2; 1 Samuel 23:1-23; Mark 1:1-11; 2 Corinthians 13:7-14; Psalm 36

The good news is that our website was corrected and I now have the correct daily readings. The bad news is because of a recent “improvement” to blogspot.com I can no longer copy and paste the links to the daily readings. Sorry about that.

Lots of people have a misconception about how a person’s call unfolds. They think that a person gets a call to do something and then (to use a biblical metaphor) the raging waters of life split and the individual effortlessly walks through those threatening waters and into their new call. This is especially true when people think about a person’s call to ministry. I wish I could say that was my experience – but it wasn’t. The process of living into my call was messy and involved a whole lot of effort. In fact, that process involved me uprooting my stakes and moving 1,100 miles away - to a part of the world I never dreamed I would travel; breaking ties with my home church; switching my denominational affiliation; and lots and lots of kicking and screaming on my part when I realized that call was taking me in directions I did not want to go at the time. During the process, I wondered if all of the messiness was reason to question my call. “After all,” I thought to myself, “if a call is really from God doesn’t that mean it comes together easily?” Thankfully I had lots of stories in Scripture to show me a person’s call doesn’t always come together easily. Today’s passage from 1 Samuel is a great example of this. In the passage, we hear the continuing story of David. Throughout David’s unfolding call story, he undergoes lots of traumatic experiences that make living into his call extremely difficult. The call to attach the Philistines and save Keilah in today’s story is but one example. David is called by God to lead an assault on the Philistines. David leads the assault despite his own men’s fears and doubts. Once they succeed in their efforts to defend Keilah, they then have to fend off the threat presented by Saul and his men. So much for the notion that answering a call is easy! All of this makes me wonder if there might be a call in your life that you are wrestling with – one that you were initially tempted to pursue, but then got derailed once some of life’s challenges got in the way. If that’s the case, I hope you’ll use David’s story to help you revisit that call. As you sit with the story, remember that just because you are called to do something doesn’t mean that it will be easy! Til next time…