January 8th

The call

January 8, 2021

THE CALL

¹⁷And Jesus said to them, ‘Follow me and I will make you fish for people.’  ¹⁸And immediately they left [abandoned] their nets and followed him.    [Mark 1]  

You wake up one January morning, you look outside to check the weather, and find that the world has ended and a new one is being born.   What do you do?  Would you try to contain this earthquake?  Put this wild sea into a bottle?   What if the earthquake has a name:  A formerly dead man raised up and walking toward us at dinnertime?

This is what life in the Kingdom is like.  It is wild, not to be contained, irresistible new life.  It takes courage to follow this vision, this call to follow Jesus even into the dark.  This Jesus is demanding:  he asks us to leave our old ways behind and follow behind him.  Who knows where it will lead.

In 1929, C.S. Lewis, professor at Oxford, agnostic about the Christian faith, was called.  This is how he describes it:

You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen [his college rooms], night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him of whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England. I did not then see what is now the most shining and obvious thing; the Divine humility which will accept a convert even on such terms. The Prodigal Son at least walked home on his own feet. But who can duly adore that Love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape? … The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of [humans], and God’s compulsion is our liberation. (Surprised by Joy, Chapter 14)      [C.S. Lewis]

Questions for Reflection:

What first attracted you to begin following Jesus?

What did you leave when you began to follow?

What does ‘fisher of people’ mean to you?

PRAYER:  Today, Lord, a new day beginning.  And here I am, waiting to step into it.  I admit some uncertainty, some fear of what it holds, some anxiety about what might be demanded of me.  Grant me the resources, the power I need to enter it with joy, carrying the peace of sharing, the love that forgives, the delight of new and strengthened relationships.  Thank you, Lord for this is the day You have made.  I will rejoice and be glad in it.  AMEN