1 Kgs 19:16b, 19-21
Gal 5:1, 13-18
Lk 9:51-62

The Call to Trust
I felt called to go to Japan when I graduated from college. I can still hear my Mom saying, “You need to think about going on for your Masters now, you are always choosing jobs that pay you very little. Why Japan now, when you are waiting to get into the Master’s program?”

She was right. I had chosen several low paying jobs for experience during my college summers. I did lean toward a romantic view of life and just “trusted” that all would work out. I really wasn’t quite sure why I was going to Japan. My decision to go to Japan was really one of those deep gut feelings that made no sense as I was making it. Yet it was so strong a sense that I could not listen to anyone or anything that made “good sense.”

When my Mom saw that I was determined to go, she graciously kept her “please be practical,” talks on low beam. As I packed to go she was a trooper and helped me pull everything together. That was 28 years ago and now living with hindsight, I am so very glad that I followed the call to service.

The year in Japan was one of such dependence on God’s grace as I experienced it through my adult students to whom I taught Conversational English. These women and men taught me the bigness of God in ways I could have never imagined. My simple stipend taught me how to keep my hands open to the ways in which my needs would be met through others’ kindness.

The gospel from the Sunday of July 1st has Jesus talking about how difficult it is to leave the known and the secure for the call of the Spirit. It is still true for despite God’s faithfulness. I forget that I am not in charge of all things and that everything that I have is a gift from God. The gift may have been made available through a job, family or friends… however if I was to follow the trail to its origin…there God would be.

Let us continue to dare to trust the call and the caller of our daily lives; for indeed, God is our inheritance.