the call

'fresh flowers' needed to get a new venue for it's weekly mail out and so I moved to a group format on Yahoo! It’s been an interesting journey though as I’ve sent out the invitations to join the group, reminders or prompts for those who I may have missed in the initial invitation. Last night I couldn’t quite bring myself to write and send it out because the Lord had not yet given me anything for all of you this week. I went to bed with a heavy heart because I knew that whatever I would send would only go to those of you who responded to the invitation and followed the instructions. You see, not everyone responded, and I’m sure there are a variety of reasons:
they don’t know they have an invitation
they chose not to respond
the invitation never arrived
other concerns pressed in and they weren’t physically able to respond
they didn’t understand what they needed to do
their computer did something weird which interfered with communication
?????????????

I know many of you anticipate Friday morning to find your flowers but I decided to wait as long as I possibly could to give as many as possible the chance to respond. As I lay in bed praying about what to send and feeling sad that the group isn’t as large as the invitation list, I couldn’t help but get a little glimpse of what God might feel like. He is always extending invitations to us, invitations for salvation, to follow, to submit, to choose life, to love our neighbour, to avoid temptation, to climb higher, to go deeper. Yet much of the time we don’t respond, for whatever reasons: we didn’t understand the invitation, maybe the wires got crossed and the person that God chose to deliver the invitation got delayed, the cares of life pressed in and we didn’t want to look at what God was saying, we didn’t realize what the invitation was and ignored it, we were simply too busy doing our own thing. Now, I am quite aware that an invitation to join this little group is nothing compared to what God calls us to but I couldn’t help noticing the similarity. He holds the door open for us as long as He possibly can, but there comes a time when He says, “I must go now, if you aren’t coming now, I’ll have to move on without you.” It’s a hard thing for me to move on without many that I know enjoy receiving flowers. Yet I am not able to withhold them from those who answered the call because of my commitment to you.

A dear friend (my pastor’s wife) wrote these words in a beautiful song (used with permission):

The Call
Words and music by Wanda Froese

When you hear the voice of the Lord
Do not turn your heart away
He will call on You today
If you listen
Just answer the call and

Come drink from my fountain
Come let’s run to my mountain
Come draw from my well
Just answer my call, and come
The other little piece of this puzzle is this. I can’t answer the invitation for you or anyone else, neither will God answer for us. We must choose to answer and follow His direction. Choose today, to answer His call and receive whatever He is calling you to today.