The Cost of the Call (Part Five)

~~ Carol Brazo ~~

An entry in “A Dif­fer­ent Prayer — 5th Edi­tion” at www.joysoriano.com and A Reli­gious Wave! June 17, 2007 at Only Three Notes.

Since I first saw the quote for this week’s writ­ing exer­cise, one of my all-time favorite Bible pas­sages has per­me­ated my thoughts:

The word of the Lord came to me, say­ing, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”“Ah, Sov­er­eign Lord,” I said, “I do not know how to speak; I am only a child.”

But the Lord said to me, “Do not say, ‘I am only a child.’ You must go to every­one I send you to and say what­ever I com­mand you. Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you and will res­cue you,” declares the Lord.

Then the Lord reached out his hand and touched my mouth and said to me, “Now, I have put my words in your mouth. See, today I appoint you over nations and king­doms to uproot and tear down, to destroy and over­throw, to build and to plant.”

Jere­miah 1:4–10

There are no acci­dents. There are no coin­ci­dences. Not one sin­gle per­son is liv­ing on this planet at this moment in time who wasn’t placed here as part of God’s plan. Each of us has a spe­cific pur­pose, a par­tic­u­lar path we are meant to walk, nei­ther of which is nec­es­sar­ily easy to dis­cern. We each have some­thing to say, whether we do it ver­bally, via prose, poetry, musi­cally, the­atri­cally … We have each come into this world accord­ing to that plan for our life … and should leave it in the same way.

We are all equal. We are all worthy.

We are all modern-day Jeremiahs.

If you stop for a moment and pon­der that thought, you will find it amaz­ing, astound­ing and, per­haps, a bit over­whelm­ing. Jere­miah did. Con­sider his response when the Lord told him that he was placed here in accor­dance with that plan. “I’m just a child! You want me to be a prophet? Are you kid­ding? What will I say? How? To whom?”

But the Lord was hav­ing none of it. Jere­miah was here for a rea­son, a pur­pose, and there was no way he could escape.

I know from per­sonal expe­ri­ence what it means to be like Jere­miah, as I’ve shared in my pre­vi­ous entries in this series. I have had first-hand expe­ri­ence with that feel­ing of “I can’t” and hav­ing God show me in no uncer­tain terms that he isn’t accept­ing my lame excuses, my cop-outs. Bluntly, I have been kicked in the hind quar­ter by the Holy Spirit more than once.

Along with the respon­si­bil­ity to be obe­di­ent when we real­ize that we have been called to a spe­cific task or to achieve a par­tic­u­lar goal, is the con­fi­dence that we will not be aban­doned or left to our own inad­e­quate devices. We must say what the Lord com­mands us to say, know­ing that he will “res­cue” us when we fal­ter. In fact, the Lord told Jere­miah that he put the words in his mouth, so he had bet­ter get busy. He pro­vided him with the tools and equip­ment he needed to get the job done.

It is time to share an expe­ri­ence that I had while argu­ing a dis­pos­i­tive motion in the trial court related to Con­ser­va­tor­ship of Wend­land. It was a “Jere­miah moment” that I shall never for­get and the com­bi­na­tion of this week’s quote and the per­sis­tent reap­pear­ance in my con­scious thoughts of the above-quoted Scrip­ture com­pels me to the con­clu­sion that now is the time to write about it.

I was not feel­ing par­tic­u­larly elo­quent that day. I was tired from the long trial that seemed des­tined never to end. And I was not look­ing for­ward to hav­ing to engage in the oral argu­ment that lay ahead of me, but I knew that I had to get through it some­how. By then, I knew that I had surely been called to han­dle the case.

So the time came and I launched into my planned oral argu­ment. But after a few moments, I real­ized that I was no longer speaking.

Oh, my lips were mov­ing and words were com­ing out of my mouth. But I wasn’t putting them there. It was quite lit­er­ally like going into an arcade and turn­ing the steer­ing wheel on one of those race car games before you put the quar­ter in: There is an image of a car careen­ing around the track, but no mat­ter which direc­tion you turn the steer­ing wheel, the vehi­cle does not respond to your commands.

What was really inter­est­ing about this expe­ri­ence was that I did not become fear­ful or panic. When I real­ized what was hap­pen­ing — the Holy Spirit was speak­ing through me and it felt like an out-of-body expe­ri­ence — I was very calm and had a great feel­ing of peace. After all, I had no choice, but to sim­ply “go with it” until such time as the Spirit had said what it needed the judge to hear.

And the judge was look­ing at me intently through­out the argu­ment. I have never had an oppor­tu­nity to talk to him about this, but I know that he is a Chris­t­ian and I have always believe that on some level — prob­a­bly uncon­scious — he knew who was speak­ing to him that day in the court­room. He never looked away from me, never shifted in his seat, never cleared his throat, … he sat focused on my words alone until I fin­ished speak­ing. Other than the sound of my voice, there was absolute silence in that courtroom.

One of my then-pastors was there that day, immersed, along with my other sup­port­ers in the court­room, in prayer as I argued.

Leav­ing the court­room, I told him, “You have to hear what just hap­pened to me.”

He smiled know­ingly and assured me that he had, from time to time, expe­ri­enced while preach­ing the exact phe­nom­e­non I described to him.

When I feel dis­cour­aged, frus­trated or in search of mean­ing or con­text in my var­i­ous activ­i­ties, I think back to that day in the court­room and that tan­gi­ble man­i­fes­ta­tion of the Lord’s stead­fast guid­ance. I think of Jere­miah and how he was pur­pose­fully called to speak, to proclaim.

My worth, like Jeremiah’s — and every other person’s — was deter­mined by the fact of my birth and the path laid before me. In order to live up to our birthright, we must come to an under­stand­ing and appre­ci­a­tion of our call­ing, our des­tiny. Acknowl­edg­ment of and thanks­giv­ing for the fact that we will be deliv­ered from our own human­ity empow­ers us to live in accor­dance with the Lord’s plan and speak with con­vic­tion, integrity and validity.

If we are faith­ful, our words can indeed bring kind­ness, com­fort and yes, even holi­ness into some­one else’s life.

In “Other” Words