In today's passage from scripiture I see the calling of Moses. You might be familiar with the term. Although perhaps a bit outdated now, the term for someone entering the priesthood would be that "he heard the calling" or "he had the calling". It can't help but think how we are all called.
If you can think back to the sixties when everyone was trying find themselves, the real question was who am I and what are my gifts? What am I supposed to do with my life? The question to me translates roughly to who am I as a person (that God made so carefully) and how can I cooperate with God's plan. How am I to gift myself to the world as God planned? When you look at it that way, it seems pretty heavy. I think we all have that innate knowledge that we are someone unique and special. Inside we know that there is some gift or talent that will make us happy and that cooperates with some master plan even when we no idea what that big plan might be.
While we like to think of people having callings to something like the priesthood or as a physician, we might fail to recognize other callings that we all have. The answer is just as important to each and every one of us.
I thought I had "the calling" to ministry and while it hasn't gone quite as I thought it would, I practice my faith and witness as best I can. But the biggest calling I didn't realize until I was about 50 years old. I realized I am gay. This 'discovery' , acknowledgement to myself and embracing it has been one of the happiest most fulfilling things in my life. In cooperating in this way, the way God made me, I am fulfilled and have been so blessed in a spouse, in the people around me and the opportunity to witness to other gay people how they too are called to be gay and holy. Your wholeness in every way is part of your being holy. Wow.
Your calling is a cooperation of the plans God has for you which is part of what makes you - you! Failure to cooperate is often seen in people who are never happy, always seeking the next 'thing' spiritually or materially. The key is to find out as much as you can about yourself. Be fully human. Be fully alive. Be you. Once you do all that, congratulations! You have 'the calling!'
Exodus 3:1-12
Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian; he led his flock beyond the wilderness, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. Then Moses said, ‘I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up.’ When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, ‘Moses, Moses!’ And he said, ‘Here I am.’ Then he said, ‘Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.’ He said further, ‘I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.
Then the Lord said, ‘I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the country of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. The cry of the Israelites has now come to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them. So come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.’ But Moses said to God, ‘Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?’ He said, ‘I will be with you; and this shall be the sign for you that it is I who sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God on this mountain.’
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