Lent Reflections: Calling

"By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn on high will break upon us to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, and to guide our feet to the way of peace." Luke 1: 78-79 

John the Baptist... he was a complicated man... he like eating locust and wearing animal skins, he didn't drink, and he spent most of his time looking quite wild and baptising people by rivers. His parents were very old, and he didn't have any brothers or sisters, so, all in all, he became the very peculiar only child, by Jerusalem's standards.

Yet time and again friends and family will get words of knowledge for me about this man or other prophets like Jeremiah (my mom), and Ezekiel (oooohhh dear).

So many friends I know WISH they had a calling... they don't feel guided into things, they enjoy stuff maybe, and I don't know how to talk to them about vocation since they didn't go to Messiah College and have it ingrained into them... it's difficult stuff how some people just get jobs in the village fishing with their fathers and Jesus just comes and asks them to come with him, and others get prophesies about their births and their parent's get strict rules about their names and they feel led into things their entire lives.

But the thing about being the "dawn on high" to "give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death," is that you have to go sit in the darkness. And you have to talk to those who are in the shadow of death, and you have to realize that without Jesus in your life, you are those people... sometimes you are even with him...

One of my very particular character traits is that sometimes I can be really stubborn. Usually I'm pretty go-with-the-flow, but sometimes there is something I will dig my heels in about and never, ever let it go...

When I was a little girl, probably 2-3 years old, my parents wanted me to eat the vegetables at dinner and I didn't want to. So after being threatened and begged, my dad, very authoritatively, says "Eat your vegetables or you get a spanking." In my small child brain I weighed the costs/benefits of eating these vegetables and quietly got down from the table, walked down the hallway and got my dad's belt from the closet and brought it to him saying "Daddy please beat me."

I often wonder if Ezekiel's parents have similar stories... Ezekiel 3:7-9
"The house of Israel will not listen to you, for they are not willing to listen to me; because all the house of Israel have a hard forehead and a stubborn heart. See, I have made your face hard against their faces, and your forehead hard against their foreheads. Like the hardest stone, harder than flint, I have made your forehead; do not fear them or be dismayed at their looks, for they are a rebellious house." 

If that isn't a gifting, then I don't know what is... and knowing that God is giving me a similar gifting... well sometimes it feels like a blessing in a curse. It also feels like something I should put on a dating website or a resume (Can be incredibly stubborn at times...) Lol. Stubbornness or as some call it faithfulness or as others call it stick-with-it-ness is not always considered a virtue. In fact, even Stephen Dubner on Freakonomics talks about how sometimes it better to "fail fast" or "quit early" instead of getting rigged in and going down with the ship slowly but surely (The Upside of Quitting). 

Still, in any community, someone needs to be the foil... someone needs to challenge the status quo and stubbornly drive things in a different direction when needed, even if it's uncomfortable or annoying. Sometimes, saying the truth makes you unpopular... as John the Baptist knows... but that's a prophet's calling, for better or for worse, to say what God says... and so often, what God says can be exactly what we don't want to hear or do or say... 

My current job is often challenging and often I think "yep, time to pack it in..." But I know the lives of young people are being changed. I know futures are brighter. I know that things are bit by bit shining brighter, like dawn might be coming (or maybe just some bright stars)... I know that even if I don't feel like a bright star or a lamp, I probably am one and when God says to stay that I have to dig my heels in and stay, even tho I want to bolt. 

When I think about teaching at a posh grammar school where there are minimal behavior problems... I always imagine Welton Academy in The Dead Poet's Society where tho everything seems to be in order, boys are dying (on the inside and out). I know that grammar schools are probably lovely places to work, but in my heart, I love working with slightly more disadvantaged communities and schools. It is a blessing and a curse. 

I guess that if God has made me to be similar to the skin-wearing, locust-eating teetotaller, John, then I can handle it, or the destruction-prophesying Ezekiel, then I can handle that too... 

Whether you feel like you just float along or not, whether you feel like you were made to do something or not, God's given us each gifts, and some of these gifts may not seem like gifts all the time until we're in situations where we need to use them, and then we shine, whether we think we do or not.