God’s call
Jeremiah 1: Before you saw the light of day, I had holy plans for you.
It would be easy for me to make this into a pro-life passage. In fact, I am tempted to do just that. However, I find myself thinking more about God’s call on lives. How does God pick people to speak on his behalf? What criteria does he use? Apparently, at least sometimes, he picks people to represent him who have no credentials at all! In this case Jeremiah looks back on his call to be a prophet and remembers that it was God who picked him, not he who picked God. Before he had any “credentials,” in fact, before he could make any decisions at all, God laid his hand on him, calling him to be his servant. Clearly, the Almighty has his own agenda and makes decisions based on things totally beyond us. Now, I have to add that that doesn’t mean that Jeremiah had no say in the matter. God’s call came: that was God’s role alone. Jeremiah had to cooperate: that was his role. In theory at least, Jeremiah could have refused God and walked away and another person’s ministry would appear in place of this book of the Bible. Since God called and Jeremiah (howbeit reluctantly) said “yes” we have his story here. I’m reminded today that when God calls we can’t always understand why. We just have to “trust and obey.”
Take Away: The Lord doesn’t call us to understand everything but he does call us to obey all we understand him to call us to.