God has no need

One might say we are all adults in the room. Cursory examination suggests otherwise. Another might say he knows what this means, but suspicion remains the better part of discernment. There are those who believe they know something until they know they don’t know anything. We might think we know someone until that someone reveals something surprising. And then, we travel somewhere and say we have been there when in truth we have been nowhere at all but where we started.

Life travels the clock until we are awakened to the reality time is but the season we are in and traveling through. We are called to live in this season, to be fully present with the gifts offered, the teachings and truths imparted, to carry them along to the next, to be ever mindful of what is to come, the season’s purpose. When those truths have settled into regions of mind and heart, become a part of who we are, settled into good soil, a light rises from those before unknown places opening to us the realization we are not here to be served, but to serve. God has come. He has spoken. In the hearing, we have come to know something, know someone and known by someone because somewhere is now here. And being here, in the presence of God, our life stills and listens as He calls us to serve.

Being here is not an ordered event. No one can say he must finish his labor before he can serve. Waiting for the right time never delivers the right time. Delay births consequences. Serving God’s Kingdom is a here and now proposition. When Jesus calls, we follow. There are no excuses.

In Luke’s Gospel, as Jesus set His face toward Jerusalem, he encountered three people. Two promised to follow Jesus. Our Lord asked the other to follow Him. Each hesitated for what would appear to be good reasons. Jesus admonished each one. Was our Lord being insensitive? His teaching is clear. Serving God’s Kingdom demands we start no matter the circumstance life brings. We are called to serve while the fire storm rages.

God’s Kingdom has no need but the need to gather into God’s arms the wanderers and the lost. He will go where He is wanted. For us, His children, we are to go where there is need, to tend to the need, to let the needful see Christ, to awake within them what they have known by sense but not by name, a thirst for an assurance God is near. And He is as near as His most faithful servant is willing to come.

The sower goes out, went out, with no expectation for return, no cause to reap, carrying no preconception with him to qualify the ground. To each he sowed, and each heard as his ground received. What did he find but striations of need and unneeded til he found good soil? Of those who possessed the good soil, to them God gave His substance, each clinging to God’s word— produced fruit with perseverance.