Daily Worship

Seeing the task…

May 26, 2014 0 0

Jeremiah 1:4-5

Jeremiah’s Call and First Visions
The Lord gave me this message: 
“I knew you before I formed you in your mother’s womb.
Before you were born I set you apart
and appointed you as my prophet to the nations.”

Exodus 3:7-10

Then the Lord told him, “I have certainly seen the oppression of my people in Egypt. I have heard their cries of distress because of their harsh slave drivers. Yes, I am aware of their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the power of the Egyptians and lead them out of Egypt into their own fertile and spacious land. It is a land flowing with milk and honey—the land where the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites now live. Look! The cry of the people of Israel has reached me, and I have seen how harshly the Egyptians abuse them. Now go, for I am sending you to Pharaoh. You must lead my people Israel out of Egypt.”

In times of transition, life becomes disorienting. Whether we are lifted into a new place or the environment around us radically changes.

All that seems familiar and "safe" is insecure. Our sense of identity in the changing of place and situation is threatened and it's easy to become bewildered, doubting who we are.

The stripping away of the familiar - of relationships, of labels, of roles and of sense of self brings pain and loss even in the midst of joyous change. To take hold of the new, we must let go of the familiar - and that feels filled with risk.

 

O Lord - You speak to me?
You call me to have a place in Your plans?
My head is in a spin, I can't take it in.
Flashes of elation, of excitement, of possibility...
of being chosen...
even glimpses of pride and fear. 
The vastness of the vista You call me to is beyond what I could imagine, 
of what I could have expected. 
Your call is overwhelming.

And yet You know this.
You speak to my inmost being.
You know me.
You see my thoughts and reactions ahead of time.
You know my needs.
And You speak. 
Words of knowing,
words of love, 
words of reassurance.
You have plans and purposes which are good.
You are calling me.
And so I will follow.

 

by Helen Brough