The First Calling

The first calling of God is common to everyone who decides to walk that road toward the home that is being prepared for each one of us.  It is recorded in the 12th chapter of Genesis and was first directed toward a sojourner named Abram.  The first verse of that chapter says, "Now the Lord said to Abram, 'Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you."  It is a call filled with ambiguity.  There is little that is definite except the things which must be forsaken to go.    

One of the most obvious things to be seen is that it is simply a call to go.  It is not a call to go to a specific place, but to a life that will unfold as the road is taken.  In the beginning the response is a call to go wherever and whenever the One doing the calling dictates and decides.   Clearly, "...the land that I will show you..." is not framed by our intentions, purposes, and plans.     

In the beginning when we started the journey of faith in response to this call, we had an idea about where it would take us.   Where it was going to take us was mostly determined by our understanding of the traditions of the church, the experience of others, and the spiritual environment in which our faith was born.  It was only after traveling the road for more time than we want to admit that we came to understand that the calling to follow had no destination, no conditions, and no expectations.  As we went along we came to understand what we could not grasp in the beginning which was that the journey was at its core a journey of absolute faith and a life of surrender to whatever and wherever.