I remember the first time someone asked me to pray for them. It was my mom. I was a child and she was in the hospital, and one day we were alone together in her room and she asked me to pray for her.
I remember when I purchased my first Bible. I had been given many different Bibles and New Testaments since I was a baby, but when I was around ten years old, my dad took me to the library book sale, and I picked out a Bible.
It was nothing special. NIV version. Plain brown cover. When I brought it up to the cashier and she saw what I was buying, she handed the Bible back to me. “I can’t charge you for this,” she told me.
So I guess I didn’t technically buy it. But I still have it, sitting on the shelf in my bedroom.
I remember the moment that I heard Psalm 121 spoken for the first time, the moment I fell in love with those words, the moment those words spoke to my heart and have never left.
I was a teacher showing my class the movie version of The Diary of Anne Frank. There is a scene when the Franks and Van Daan’s are hiding—the Green Police just on the other side of the hidden door and Mrs. Frank begins reciting Psalm 121.
For Mrs. Frank, reciting Psalm 121 was like taking ahold of God’s hand and pulling Him close to her and wrapping His arms around her. There was peace and there was safety and comfort in those words, not just for her, but for me as well.
I remember my first Holy Communion, my first confession, my confirmation.
I remember Sister Julie and Monsignor Festa and Father Libera, the first faces of the clergy, Catholic or otherwise, that I ever knew. I remember Sister Julie’s kindness and Father Libera’s youth at least compared to Monsignor Festa whose extreme age terrified me and yet when he heard my first confession, he took pity on me. He met me in a room, not a confessional. His face was not hidden by a screen. He looked me in the eye, and when I was finished, he gave me three Hail Marys as penance.
I remember desperately wanting to serve at the altar, but that was something reserved only for boys at that time. There were no Altar Girls.
Later when my dad took me to a nearby Baptist church, there was nothing I wanted more than to be the one who lit the candles at the altar.
It would take me about twenty-five years to fulfill that dream.
When I look back over my life, my spirituality, my relationship with God can best be summed up by Psalm 42, verses 1-2, “As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God ….”
For as long as I can remember, God has been calling to me.
And I have been forever searching for Him.
It would help if He stayed in one place.
But God cannot be contained.
He calls to us.
And we follow.
And I want to make something very clear—He calls to all of us.
God’s calling is not reserved for the few, for the special ones, for the select.
He calls us each to Him.
Again, the psalms tell us that He calls to us, that He knows us, that He, as Psalm 139 verse 13 tells, “created [our] inmost being. He knit [us] together in [our] mother’s womb.”
He calls to all us because we are each fearfully and wonderfully made by Him.
When we talk about calling, we think it’s something that’s reserved for those who wish to enter the priesthood or diaconate or some other clerical commitment, but that is a rather narrow, small vision of God’s calling.
Because God calls each of us and the call is the same for each of us.
He calls because He wants us to come to Him.
He calls because He wants you to know that He’s there.
He calls because He longs to be in a relationship with you.
I’m sure you’ve seen those videos of men and women in the military returning home to surprise their children. I dare you not to cry at those. The look on those children’s faces. The sheer and pure joy they feel in seeing their mom or dad … this is what God calls us to Him for, because when we are with Him, when we are serving Him, when we are doing what He knows is best for us, we will experience that joy.
Frederick Buechner describes your calling as “the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger, meet.”
If you are struggling today, as we all struggle at one point or at many points in our lives, to find purpose, to find meaning in your life—well, again the psalms tell us the way.
In today’s reading Psalm 119 verses 10 and 11, “With my whole heart, I seek you … I treasure your word in my heart ….”
Follow your heart. You want to know your purpose? You want to know that ever elusive raison d’etre? Let your heart lead you to God.
Matthew 6:21 says, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
Let your heart lead.
What did today’s reading from Proverbs 2:3-5 say? “If you indeed cry out for insight, and raise your voice for understanding; if you seek it like silver, and search for it as for hidden treasures—then you will understand the fear of Lord, and find the knowledge of God.”
Seek out God.
Be unrelenting in your pursuit.
And you will know when you have found Him, because hope and joy as pure and innocent as the gates of Heaven, will rush through you.
John 4:14 says, “but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.”
Once you have found Him, you will thirst no more.
When was the first time you heard God calling to you?
I can’t remember the first time I heard God’s call, but I’m pretty sure that it happened when I was a baby, when my dad read to me from the Bible. I’m also pretty certain that I had no idea what those words meant. I was a baby. But even babies understand—if not the words themselves—that the emotion behind those words, the feeling. Even babies understand, perhaps better than anyone—love.
When was the first time God called to you?
Were you listening?
Have you answered Him yet?
God is calling.
He’s calling you right now.
Go to Him.
Rest in Him.
And do good.
Amen.
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