Job description amended

My job description is starting to change. It's funny, I have been resisting it for quite some time now, thinking that my resistance was godly, only to realize that I have actually been resisting the Holy Spirit. One recalls Jesus' statement to Saul in Acts 26:14: "It is hard for you to kick against the goads." This suggests that even before the Damascus Road incident, the zealous Pharisee may have been for some time brushing off the more gentle, goad-like nudges of God that he was on the wrong track.

My situation is not of such epic importance, but like Paul, I needed to have my nose rubbed in it before I would see the light and would countenance changing my course. I kept thinking that God wants me at the computer eight hours a day. And the reason I kept thinking that was because I have a very middle-class American view of life, après tout. In other words, it is hard for me to think outside of the box. The amount of evidence the Lord was forced to amass before I would even consider another possibility is comical, and now has reached such critical mass that something has to give. I need to rethink this job thing.

I thought all these phone calls and disasters were interruptions. If people would just stop calling with problems, if my mother would just stop having health episodes, if people in my house didn't need to eat three times a day and go to the dentist, if people just stopped having moral crises-then I could get some writing done around here.

I don't like to find out that I have such a conservative bent, but there it is. I am crying "uncle" now:

"OK, Lord, you are making it impossible to get a decent day's work done these days, and this has been going on for months. I will crank out one puny column today if I'm lucky. You know I like to have a little buffer and not live so close to the edge.

"And I am daily being forced to make snap decisions that require wrestling with the ultimate issues of faith. You put pressure on me to do things that are scary in the sense that I stake everything on your faithfulness. I am going to spend this evening with a couple who are in trouble, and I know you want me to go over there. It means a few more hours of lost productivity."

I like what Dietrich Bonhoeffer said:

"The disciple is dragged out of his relative security into a life of absolute insecurity (that is, in truth, into the absolute security and safety of the fellowship of Jesus), from a life which is observable and calculable (it is, in fact, quite incalculable) into a life where everything is unobservable and fortuitous (that is, into one which is necessary and calculable) . . ." (The Cost of Discipleship).

Way leads to way. How do you know, oh puny, finite mind of mine, whether being tethered to the computer for eight-or even four-hours a day will lead to greater glory to the Lord (or even better columns, for that matter) than giving yourself over to the random demands of the day that have all the earmarks of the Holy Spirit's leading?

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