God Breaks Through
A wise teacher once told me that liturgy lifts us out of “tick-tock time” into God’s time. No more “same old, same old.” A successful insurance agent, within reach of retirement, lamented to a friend that what he wanted to do, what he felt God might be calling him to, was to teach in an inner city Catholic school. But there were too many obstacles. Still, he had a sense that the word of God had come to him and was prodding him to act. “Ah well,” he lamented, “a leopard can’t change its spots.” “Yeah, but you’re not a leopard, so change!” his friend said, shocking him to action. He enrolled in a local college to get certification for teaching, and then he and his wife downsized their
home and lifestyle, and within a year or so he was working for a small stipend at the academy. It’s the best time in his life.
Sometimes in the midst of the everyday, in our days measured out by the ticking of the clock, God’s own time breaks through. A classmate of mine from the seminary told me his story. He said that he was praying one day over the scripture of the call of the apostles, and it suddenly came to him that he should be a priest. He went to the rectory and poured out his heart and his worries to the priest there. He said he was frightened of the call, even though he was sure that this was God’s plan. “Then why be frightened?” asked the priest. “Because I am a Methodist at the moment,’ came the disarming reply. That’s the way God works, if we practice listening to his word.
~by Reverend James A. Field