The Call

Wow, it's been too many days since I have posted anything. We had a wonderful Mother's Day weekend - a great (huge!) family dinner at the city park, and a day with just our 4 at Springfield yesterday. I was going to post Sunday morning about Mother's Day - it would have been profound, no doubt (ha)...but God has a way of fine tuning our grand and lofty ideas about things sometimes.

We like to make the call to motherhood some noble thing, putting it high on a pedestal so that we feel good about ourselves. But the call to motherhood is no different than the call to anything else in this life. Aren't we called above all to be followers of Christ? I am reading a phenominal book right now by Peter Grieg called "The Vision and The Vow". He talks about this in chapter 7 - our call in life is to do whatever Jesus did - love the unlovely, feed the hungry, take care of the poor, do our work without complaining, pray for others, serve others, bind up broken hearts, make disciples, and this shockingly unglamourous list goes on and on! We want to be "called" to something big - to be a world-famous preacher or musician, to be a high-ranking official, to have the biggest and the best of everything - but the real call, extended to each and every person to ever walk this earth, is to simply follow in the footsteps of Jesus and walk in obedience to Him. It's a call to the seemingly mundane, the seemingly ordinary, the seemingly trite. "Well, I'm just not "called" to set up chairs for church - don't you know who I am? I'm a board member, I'm a teacher, I'm a leader, I'm a pastor!! That duty is for the ones who can't do anything else..." How many times do we voice this opinion? Maybe we don't voice it aloud, but if we're truly honest, we think it!

As mothers, we are called on to do many of these things for our families. As long as we categorize them under the "Call to Motherhood", we don't mind doing them. But sometimes when the Holy Spirit asks us to serve others in the same way we say, "I just don't have time" or "I'm just not called to that". We don't mind serving others as long as it's under some noble title or as long as we can put ourselves up on a pedestal for doing it. We don't mind as long as it's comfortable. And when it goes unnoticed or when we aren't properly validated for doing it, well that's a whole new ball game!

This is one of those times I talked about earlier where we hold hands and jump with abandon into the Father's arms. Let's take the plunge, together! Let's find ways to serve others and to walk in the footsteps of Jesus whether it's noticed or not. Even if no one else sees, I guarantee Jesus sees...