An Invitation to Abandon
Today’s readings provide us with what can become both the most important invitation and the greatest challenge of our lives. It is a challenge to make our faith, spirituality, and relationship with God about God and not ourselves.
In the first reading, Samual, with the help of his guardian Eli, hears and responds to the voice of God. He says, “Speak, Lord; your servant is listening.”
In the Gospel, two disciples traveling with John the Baptist see Jesus walking by them. They know he is the one everyone is talking about. They ask, “Where do you live?” Jesus answers, “Come and see.”
In both cases, an invitation to a relationship with God is offered, and the response is in the power of the invited. Samual and the disciples do not have to respond to the call of God. They are invited, and they make their own decision to respond. Once they accept the invitation, their relationship with God is no longer about them but about God and where God leads.
We have something essential to learn from the call and response of Samual as well as the call and response of the disciples. When we respond to the invitation of God to have a relationship with Him, everything changes.
When we accept Jesus’ invitation to come and see, we can only do so with abandon. We leave ourselves behind and go through the looking glass of faith and see our lives and the lives of those we encounter differently.
Instead of seeing from the perspective of what faith does for me, we see from what faith calls me to. We see ourselves and our world from the standpoint of God seeing, being, and responding in and through us.
This absolutely contradicts how we look at most things in our lives. Whether referring to the baby boomers and their Me generation moniker, Millennials, or Generation X, Y, or Z, the one common trait is the need to get something out of what I spend my time on. The focus is on the individual and what any activity, including developing a faith life, does for me.
God’s invitation to Samual and Jesus to the disciples turns that on its head. Faith is not about ME. Faith is about God. Faith is about surrender to the leading of God and a willingness to follow even if I get nothing I can measure out of it. Faith, responding to the invitation of God, is not about me. It is about God and only God. Faith is about allowing the divinity of God to possess me enough that my life — that I become a window into the heart of God.
When we allow ourselves to abandon our need to get something out of faith, we become empty enough to be filled with the grace of God.
Faith is turning off our measuring minds. It is letting go of the cost-benefit analysis. It is dropping the need to get a good deal.
Faith is about extravagant abandon to an invitation. It is allowing God total control. Faith is keeping our hearts so focused on God that we allow God to pour His divinity into the poor, cracked vessel that is me.
The invitation to faith is not a casual invitation to stop by for cocktails. It is an invitation to be “all in” with God. Dangling our toes in the waters of faith will never really cut it. If we try to dance around the edges, we will never get beyond our need to “get something out” of our faith life. And we will never know the wonder of complete abandonment in the heart of God.
It is hard to abandon ourselves without caution to anything. That’s okay. God is patient, and He keeps inviting. God continually reaches out His hand and invites us to “come and see.” When we finally are empty enough to take His hand, to accept His invitation, then everything changes. Then, faith is no longer about me. It is about God in me.
In God’s Unending Love,
Gwen
