So…
What do you do when God calls?
Oh heavens, it’s God again on the cell!
What do I do?
Ah…Yo, what’s up, Lord?
No, no, no, I got your text. No, no, I’m
not ghosting you, and how do you know about ghosting? Oh, it happens a lot? I
wouldn’t know...
Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that
“making a difference thing,” and well, I’m really busy right now. The wife is
back to school and the grand baby is growing, and work is really busy, and….
What’s that…. You think my growth as a
follower of Jesus would go up a notch if I actually did what you asked and made
a difference. Following Jesus means taking up a cross. And filling an orange bucket
or five, or going to Texas, or walking in the CROP Walk, or offer to help lead
the “Trunk or Treat”, or whatever would help me become a better disciple.
Yeah, I think it would too. So why am I
running the other way?
Oh look, there’s another incoming call,
can I get back to you? You’ll be there waiting? Yeah, okay. Talk to you later.
Bye.>
So, you ever ghosted God?
Jonah had heard the call of God to go to
Nineveh, but instead headed to Spain. He didn’t want to go. He had other things
to do.
He was afraid of the cost. He didn’t
know any of Nineveh’s people personally, though for nationalistic reasons, he
hated them.
For Jonah, it was easiest to ignore
God’s call and just get on with his life.
Do you know anyone like that? Someone
perhaps who faced with an invitation from God to do what Jesus would do,
instead chooses a more likeable, or an easy path. Or just ghosts God?
But as you well know, for the people of
God, that is not an option…
“And yesterday, with muddy river water
still washing over entire communities on Friday, eight days after Hurricane
Florence slammed into land with nearly 3 feet of rain, new evacuation orders
forced residents to flee to higher ground amid a sprawling disaster that's
beginning to feel like it will never end.”
“At least 43 people have died, included
an elderly man whose body was found in a submerged pickup truck in South
Carolina, and hundreds were forced from their homes as rivers kept swelling
higher.”
“Leaders in the Carolina's warned
residents not to get complacent, warning additional horrors lie ahead before
things get much better.”
"Although the winds are gone and
the rain is not falling, the water is still there and the worst is still to
come," said South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster.
One of the problems with God’s call is
that it is based on God’s knowledge of a situation and a people, a knowledge
and experience unfettered from the typical human limited knowledge.
We concern ourselves with a people’s
reputations, judging whether they adequately prepared. We consider their
sinfulness and disobedience and most often choose punishment as a reasonable
outcome.
We forget that God’s knows all about our
sins and iniquities and yet still extends to us his love. God is the original
lifeguard with the lifeguard’s mantra: reach, throw, row, go.
If someone is drowning in a pool of
water (no matter the nature of the pool) the lifeguard looks and finds a safe
way to reach the one struggling, one that empowers the drowning person to get
to safety.
Reaching allows them to grab the stick,
throwing to hold fast to the float, rowing to grab on to the boat, and going,
to hold fast to you.
There is no questioning how a person got
in trouble, there is no weighing of the merits of saving them. What is at stake
is another person’s life, and in that case, we act, just as God does in the
case of Nineveh.
Yes, they are great sinners, but our God
is in the business of saving great sinners!
And the people of Nineveh wanted to be
saved, much to Jonah’s surprise. Jonah barely began to preach and they were
ready to repent. They did everything they could to cling to the opportunity for
salvation from the king on down, including the livestock!
It is an event of huge proportions. But
here’s the twist! It happens because Jonah goes and speaks God’s word to
Nineveh.
The waters have risen in Texas, and then
in Puerto Rico, and now in the Carolina’s, and in the Carolina’s they are still
rising. There are houses that are filled with mud. There are families that are
displaced. It’s bad.
But there are opportunities to make a
difference, but only if we are willing.
Jonah went!
He could not have imagined what God had
prepared for him to see and hear.
Far from rejecting the word of the Lord,
the people of Nineveh embraced God’s salvation and repented.
Again, Jonah, God’s reluctant prophet,
had brought about a harvest of new followers of the Lord that would have made
any modern-day evangelist sing and shout.
But only because Jonah had finally
listened and heeded God’s call.
How about you? What is God calling you
to do?
Where is God calling you to go?
How much time and energy do you think
you could spare to honor the Lord’s work in your life, in order to be the
lifeguard God desires you to be?
Opportunities abound. May God bless you
as you follow God’s call. Amen.
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