by Demi Prentiss

Discerning how God is calling us to life appears to be a life-long process. Sometimes I’d like to think it’s a “one-and-done” task, to be envisioned as a young adult and then worked at for a life-time. I’m learning that God is much more implacable. Br. Geoffrey Tristram, in a sermon on the website of the Society of St. John the Evangelist, offers a story about how our loving and relentless God persists in calling us to new life:

There is a story I like about the Russian rabbi Zusia.

 

          One day some students were talking with him and the first said, “Rabbi Zusia, I am afraid that when I appear before the Holy One he will ask me, ’Why did you not have the faith of Abraham?’ A second student said, ‘I am afraid that when I am before the Holy One he will ask me, ‘Why did you not have the patience of Job?’ Then a third student said, ‘Rabbi, I am afraid that when I stand before the Holy One he will ask me, ‘Why did you not have the courage of Moses?’

         Then they all asked Rabbi Zusia, ‘Rabbi, when you appear before the Holy One which question do you most fear?’ Rabbi Zusia answered, ‘When I appear before the Holy One, I’m afraid he’ll ask me, ‘Zusia, why were you not Zusia?’”

 

So what is your vocation?  Who are you at the deepest level? When Jesus looks at you and loves you, who does he see? What is it which truly makes you come alive?  Have you discovered it yet?  Is God inviting you to take a risk and to go deeper?

Again and again, I’m called to remember the saying, “God isn’t finished with me yet.” Day after day, God reminds us of our baptismal mission, and that we are “marked as Christ’s own forever.” Each day as we wash our faces and remember our baptisms, God renews the challenge for us to be ourselves — to risk being the person that God dreams of us being.