Write Now!
This blog started as a 'Lenten Writing Project', where we wrote each day in Lent. Now that Summer is here, let's keep up the discipline of writing with a weekly writing challenge! A prompt will be posted each week and anyone is welcome to join in and post their writing here or participate just by reading it.
Every writer has their own special light to add to this blog and all of your writing offerings are appreciated, whether poetry, prose, essay, thoughts, lists or comments and encouragement.
What is God calling me to do? As a child, I first heard this question at age 8 in Sunday School, when a missionary gave a slide presentation of her mission to India. God was calling me to be a missionary! In the next few years I thought about being a pastor (couldn’t do that as I am a girl), a doctor (couldn’t do that because I am a girl), and then a nurse (because I thought that was close to being a doctor).
ReplyDeleteBut I didn’t answer those calls.
What was God calling me to do? When my children were in school, I became a teacher. I believe God called me to teaching, but like Moses I spent time in the wilderness before I heard that call. God blessed my years of teaching in many ways, as I traveled the world, teaching not only in Washington and Pennsylvania, but also in Congo, Bolivia, Poland, and China.
I did answer those calls.
What is God calling me to do? I have known people who agonize over this question, believing they need to hear something very specific from God. I have known others who perhaps don’t even ask this question. I have come to believe the question is very important, yet quite simple.
I hear answers in God’s word in Micah 6:8b and Matthew 22:37-39. Micah 6:8b says, “…what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” In Matthew 22:37-39 Jesus says, “’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”
God calls us, and today I answer in the words of a friend, “I leave this moment with you, God, counting myself blessed that you would choose to make me the person I am and love me into the person I am becoming. Amen.”
lovely, honest, refreshing, and joyful, RuthAnn. Thanks for the reminder that calls can come in all forms and sizes :)
DeleteI have experienced similar calls to RuthAnn above - as a young girl, I felt God was calling me to be a pastor but I was told by my Godmother that it wasn't true because I was female. At 17 years old, I went to Nairobi to visit my Godmother (she was a missionary) and I felt called to overseas mission (later to go back to Nairobi with my husband and discern that was NOT our calling). But as I grew older, I began to recognize a pattern occurring. People would approach me - friends, acquaintances and strangers, to ask me questions of body-wholeness. Specifically, and for some reason I may never truly know, people have felt comfortable talking with me about their sexual selves. It wasn't until a few years ago that I realized this could be a call from God. I felt really good that people felt me a safe person especially from within the church, and I really looked forward to being approached about such things. I talked to Pr. Mike, who sent me on to candidacy with the synod and every person I speak with about what I want to do affirms to me that it's true. That is how I know and believe this is a true call from God - because it has been confirmed by the community of God's people,strangers and friends, over and over and over again.
ReplyDeleteSo what is it exactly that I am called to do? I am called to be a Sister with the ELCA, and to write sexual theology and curriculum with which to start congregational and individual conversations about sexual and relational wholeness, and how our God-gifted sexuality permeates all aspects of our whole lives. I'm called to remind the church specifically, that we do not need to hide our whole-inclusive-selves when we are in church, nor hide from them ourselves, and help the church open that dark closet we shove our sexual selves in :)
by Pat Mason
ReplyDeleteTo believe.
After that, everything else will just fall into place.
Lenten Prompt #31 Friday March 23 2012
ReplyDeleteMy life is like a compass
I turn it this way and that
trying to find the right direction
the right way
for me
The compass Arrow is You
O GOD
The arrow is You
Always pointing the same WAY
Always pointing to You
I see it and
I know where it goes
Yet I continue to turn the compass
hoping to find
an easier way
trying to find
my way
But still it points to You
The Arrow gets larger and brighter each day
I can ignore it no longer
I long for Your Way
Send me Your Spirit
O GOD
To help me follow the right direction
The Way that points to You
for You know I can't do this alone
since I am too weak by nature
My life is like a compass
I turn it this way and that
But Holy Spirit helps me
find the right direction
The direction that points to GOD
s.h.
Lovely, Mom : )
DeleteAmateur Sleuth
ReplyDeleteIn general, I like mysteries (I’ve even written a few),
But not when it comes to what you want for me, big guy.
Don’t give me puzzling clues pointing to a collection of the usual suspects
Tangled in a net filled with red herrings.
And if you have a suggestion for what you want from me,
I’d rather you spell it out in English, not some foreign language
With too many consonants and strange meaningless symbols above the vowels,
And harps, not question marks, at the end of every indecipherable sentence.
Just give it to me straight, don’t beat around a burning bush.
Save your mysteries for Sherlock Holmes or the Hardy boys
Or one of those super sleuths on TV who can read minds or predict the future
Or remember everything with photographic precision.
I’m okay at mysteries, but not Big Mysteries,
And I’m not much good at reading between the lines.
—Dave Patneaude
I agree! You said it so succintly; and it can be so confusing!
Deletes.h.
Am I There Yet?
ReplyDeleteby Marlene Obie
I've often asked God where I'm supposed to be
and often complained that I'm sure whereever
I am is not it.
But when the current pulled me on downstream,
I'd wonder if I was headed to the right
place to sink my roots.
At specific places along the way I've stopped
for awhile and grown a little taller
and wiser, bloomed a time or two
and was swept along again.
At each stop on the bank,I asorbed a different
mixture of nutrients and left some I'd acquired.
wondering when and where I would go to seed
and sometimes why I was in a particular place.
And here I am asking what more I should do
before I slide into the ocean or
become part of the soil.
Have I done enough? Am I doing enough?
I swear sometimes I hear God sigh and say,
"Just relax. Enjoy the sunrise and sunset.
"Unfold your petals here and share
your stories about the ride.
Watch and enjoy the offspring of your roots
and the beauty of your companion flowers and trees"
"Know that when I think of something else
I'll shake your branches."
God's Call
ReplyDeleteLive and breath
stretch and grow
work and sing
love and know
Think and preach
love and teach
be a light
in the night
Hope and pray
most every day
share your stuff
that's enough
I love everyone's responses to this question - thank you for sharing it! I wrote something too, but it's not quite a fit for the blog at this time. I'll have to mess with it a bit longer...but I did write something & just wanted to placehold that I did it: )
ReplyDelete