Called

I can hardly bear to write about this, preferring, I suppose, to live in the delusion that if it doesn’t appear on the blog then it’s not real.  (Please–we all have our ways of coping.)

Alas, as the clock ticks toward June it’s becoming more and more real: the call of God is causing problems. 

 Again.

I admit that I have spent a large portion of my life following this elusive thing everybody has labeled “God’s call on your life.”  It has led me personally over oceans and into the strangest places you might imagine, exasperating people who love me and birthing muttered comments like, “There she goes again!,” among other things. 

And now, even though I would be the first to warn against ignoring its tug on your life, it seems I am being invited to stand aside and witness the movement that God’s call on a life again.

Two years ago I met Allyson Wisdom.  I totally and completely confess to being very worried–what were they thinking assigning this sweet, white, young, Georgia sorority girl to live in downtown DC, a gritty urban center with one of the highest crime rates in the country, to run a program

for inner city kids . . . most of whom were teenaged boys?  Yet the last two years of watching the call of God take hold of a life and propel it to unthinkable possibilities has been nothing short of astounding. 

In June Allyson (far right) will finish her two-year assignment as director of Calvary’s Horizons Club, an afterschool club for inner city kids.  She’ll wrap up an incredible two-year tenure of organizational mastery and relational miracles.  She’ll pack her boxes and leave us . . . to follow the call of God to what’s next for her. 

Of course, following the call of God is what got her here in the first place. 

And kids like Joy and Ferlando will never be the same after knowing her stable, faith-infused presence in their lives. 

And those of us who have been her colleagues will pause, again and again and again, to admire her faithfulness and to thank God for directing her journey of faith to intersect with ours, if only for a little while.

But all of us will also be wondering about where this call of God leaves us.  Who will plan the next Spring Break Horizons trip?  Who will be a faithful presence in the lives of these kids who need one so much?  Who on earth will be able to take Allyson’s place?

No one, really. 

But I’ve lived long enough with the call of God to know that someone else out there is also feelng the need to answer a call from God.  And that someone will be just the person that Joy and Ferlando and Calvary Baptist Church need next.

Such is the mystery of the call of God . . .  giving us just the right person . . . and then another right person . . . reminding us that we are never the creators of God’s work in the world, only faithful midwives who have the holy honor of standing by and watching, and sometimes pitching in a little.

Thank you, Allyson for having the courage to answer God’s call . . . every time.