This Week |
#40 (6-6-04)
When the Call Comes
If you have teen-agers, or will
have teen-agers, or have had teen-agers in your home, you undoubtedly
understand the process of waiting for “the call.” Until you’ve had your
first one you don’t spend a lot of time thinking about it, but after the
first one, you are constantly alert for the next one.
You hope the call will be for a ride
home, or a “meet me at the mall and bring money”, or a spilled ketchup
stain and the need for a change of clothes. You might even imagine that
once in a while along the way they will call just to tell you “Happy
Birthday,” or “I llove you.” Sometimes it is more than that. Sometimes
the calls are for really tough things, and sometimes it is someone else
who is calling – the police, the nurse, the principal, or the pastor.
It’s not easy getting kids through to
adulthood, and even then, until the Lord calls you home, you spend hours,
nights, week-ends, worrying about them, hoping everything is OK, and
finding some extra funds to help. Most kids get through all right, but not
without a few problems, lots of distress about real or imagined
difficulties, and most manage to create a couple of heart-stoppers for
you.
Imagine then, how the Father lives with
His children. Most of us are really pretty self-sufficient (we rarely ever
call, if at all), some are constantly seeking more stuff (what we have is
never enough) and many get into the communication mode only on those
seemingly frequent occasions when everything else has failed. The command
given to us in Jeremiah 33:3 goes unused, unknown, and untested.
The promise of Matthew 7:7-11 never comes to fruition in our lives.
God’s kids know he has provided absolute
sufficiency, but refuse to appropriate it. We have little time to call,
except, perhaps, when a problem arises. We create our own view of the
world ignoring what we have been taught by His Word. We don’t or won’t
remember from whence we came to life, and fail to appropriate even a
meager portion of His bountiful grace.
Just as our kids often ignore us except
when they want something, or seek our assistance only when they have to,
so we are often like that with our Heavenly Father. He is available for a
call from us when we need help. He is available for a call from us when we
don’t need help. Other people talk to Him about us, but He would prefer to
hear directly from us – good or bad.
© Weaver 2004