calling, day 7

Come to Stillness: Take a few minutes to allow your mind and heart to be still before God.

 Opening Prayer:Help me, Oh God, to listen to what it is that makes my heart glad and to follow where it leads.  May joy, not guilt, Your voice, not others, Your will, not my willfulness, be the guides that lead me to my vocation.  Help me to unearth the passions of my heart that lie buried in my youth.  And can help me to go over that ground again and again until I can hold in my hands, hold and treasure, Your calling on my life.  Amen. (Windows of the Soul by Ken Gire)

Psalm for the Week: Psalm 25

Scripture for the Day: 1 Samuel 3:1-11

Reading for Reflection:

When we are younger and are wrestling with choices about the future, we are very often asked, and ask ourselves:  “What are you going to do when you grow up?”  It is the wrong question.  What we are going to do is not who we are.

     When it was time for me to make choices, I should have been wrestling with another question.  I should have been asking, “Who am I going to be when I grow up?”  What I then went on to do with that should have been a reflection of who I was to be, a reflection of the word that was whispered into me.  I should have been looking for work to do that would sustain and nurture who I am (who I be, if you will).  I was then, and am still, the only person on earth who has any clue at all what was whispered into me in the depths of my mother’s womb.  Everyone else is just guessing, and their guesses are a lot less well informed than mine.  God whispered the word Robert into me, and no one else.  If I can not hear that word, no one can.  If I do not hear that word, no one will.  If I do hear it and fail to act upon it, no one will be the word called Robert that God spoke.  (Between the Dreaming and the Coming True by Robert Benson)


Reflection and Listening: silent and written

Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself

Song for the Week: All for Jesus

All for Jesus, all for Jesus!
All my being's ransomed pow'rs:
All my thoughts and words and doings,
All my days and all my hours.

 

Let my hands perform His bidding,
Let my feet run in His ways;
Let my eyes see Jesus only,
Let my lips speak forth His praise.

 

Chorus: Jesus, Jesus, how I trust Him!
How I've proved Him o'er and o'er Jesus,
Jesus, precious Jesus!
O for grace to trust Him more!

 

Worldlings prize their gems of beauty,
Cling to gilded toys of dust,
Boast of wealth and fame and pleasure;
Only Jesus will I trust.

 

Since my eyes were fixed on Jesus,
I've lost sight of all beside;
So enchained my spirit's vision,
Looking at the Crucified.
(Repeat chorus)

 

Oh, what wonder! How amazing!
Jesus, glorious King of kings,
Deigns to call me His beloved,
Lets me rest beneath His wings.
(Repeat chorus)

Closing Prayer:
Go forth as God’s servant.  Remember God’s presence often and draw strength from the knowledge that the One who calls and sends also sustains.  Amen.  (A Guide to Prayer by Rueben Job)