Freedom to say yes to God's callings: Pentecost Thursday
Look: Tree of Life in the City, mural at Christ on Capitol Hill, Saint Paul, MN by DeAnn L. Parks - Source
Listen: Are We Not One, Young Oceans - Lyrics | Spotify | YouTube
I’ve updated the Pentecost playlist! You can listen to it here: Pentecost 2021: Rushing Wind
Read: Psalm 37; Deuteronomy 4:32-40; 2 Corinthians 3:1-18; Luke 16:1-9
Prayer to the Holy Spirit:
Come, Holy Spirit,
fill the hearts of your faithful,
and enkindle in us the fire of your love.
Send forth your Spirit and we shall be created,
and you shall renew the face of the earth.
Amen.
Do: Throughout the week I'll be sharing excerpts from spiritual teacher Henri Nouwen as well as my own brief reflections about the way the Holy Spirit empowers us to live in peace, freedom, and power. Read, reflect, journal, and share your own responses with the rest of us in the comment section below.
Call Others To Freedom
When you are interiorly free you call others to freedom, whether you know it or not. Freedom attracts wherever it appears. A free man or a free woman creates a space where others feel safe and want to dwell. Our world is so full of conditions, demands, requirements, and obligations that we often wonder what is expected of us. But when we meet a truly free person, there are no expectations, only an invitation to reach into ourselves and discover there our own freedom.
Where true inner freedom is, there is God. And where God is, there we want to be.
-A Spirituality of Living by Henri Nouwen
We Are the Glory of God
Living a spiritual life is living a life in which our spirits and the Spirit of God bear a joint witness that we belong to God as God's beloved children, (see Romans 8:16). This witness involves every aspect of our lives. Paul says: "Whatever you eat, then, or drink, and whatever else you do, do it all for the glory of God" (1 Corinthians 10:31). And we are the glory of God when we give full visibility to the freedom of the children of God.
When we live in communion with God's Spirit, we can only be witnesses, because wherever we go and whomever we meet, God's Spirit will manifest itself through us.
-Making All Things New by Henri Nouwen
If you’ve followed anything I’ve written for the past few years, you’ll know that I’m drawn to consider what it means to be called by God in the places we live, work, and worship. On more than one occasion I’ve shared the crooked and unexpected pathway God continues to call Brian and me journey. There’s been a cost to respond to God’s callings. I bet this is true for you, also.
In the stories I’ve told and invited others to share I’ve tried to keep us all honest that when we talk about callings we’re usually talking about decisions that will cost us more than we’d ever expected and will bring more reward than we could ever imagine. In this light, saying yes to God’s callings weighs only as much as Jesus himself shoulders. Yoked with Jesus, each calling comes with an invitation to rest. By his Spirit, we’re free to respond to callings as an invitation from the Creator.
I don’t know when you’ll hear the next step, the one that takes you deeper into what is true about who God is and who you are made to be in Him. I don’t know what the invitation will cost you or what you’re likely investing right now with the work you do today. I don’t know who the Caller will enlist to help get your attention, but I know that He knows. He is magnificently efficient in letting no part of your life go to waste to accomplish His purposes in us and through us. He’s also wildly (and sometimes a bit aggravatingly) unpredictable in the paths He allows us to pursue - and the ones He doesn’t.
Today, rest in the knowledge that where God calls, he sends the Spirit to help and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. This freedom attracts and multiplies as our lives bear witness to the reality that “we are the glory of God when we give full visibility to the freedom of the children of God.”
The God who calls us, knows us. He knows the number of our days and the number of all the days left before He sends Jesus to once and for all invite all of us into the fully-restored peaceable kingdom. In that day, I fully expect to be waiting tables for those who’ve never been served a meal they did not suffer to obtain. (Every time I have the opportunity now to serve the oppressed, I’m just practicing for that day.)
Until that day, God keeps track of every unfinished part of the story He’s writing. For now, He keeps inviting us to become who we will be forever. I’m doing it right now. And so are you.
Peace, friends,
Tamara
p.s., If you'd find it helpful to have another person discern with you how God is calling you and making the pathway to that calling possible, that's what I do as a Spiritual Director. You can message me here or through the contact form at my Spiritual Direction webpage for more information: https://www.tamarahillmurphy.com/spiritual-direction