There is a crisis of disobedience when we choose to disobey God\u2019s will for our lives. In this instance, I think of Jonah\u2026. He thinks he\u2019s right. He hates the Assyrians, and understandably so. After all, they were a marauding, land-grabbing nation, a real\u202fthreat to Israel. He had national pride. He wanted to see them destroyed. And so, when he gets the call from God, he travels 2,500\u202fmiles to the southern area of Spain. He couldn\u2019t get much further away. Why does he flee? He flees, he says at the end of chapter four, because he knows God is merciful. There is no worse situation than a merciful God when you want to see your enemies get what\u2019s coming to them. Jonah wants to do things his way and ends up in the belly of a sea monster.\u202f\u202f <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Do you have a Jonah story? I do.\u202fFrom the age of ten through my twenties, I knew I had a call of God on my life. Through dreams, waking visions, and moments of surprising attunement with the Divine, I knew God was calling me. But here I am, a ten-year-old girl, with a call to something I don\u2019t understand. I\u2019d never seen a woman in ministry. For that matter, I\u2019d never seen a woman leading in any spiritual capacity. So, what to do?\u202f <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Well, what I did was I went on with my life. I got married, had two children, and after a decade heard the call again even more strongly. This time I turned my head to where I thought God lived (up there) and I said, \u201cExcuse me, sir, or ma\u2019am\u201d\u2014I wanted to cover my bases\u2014\u201cI don\u2019t know if you know about the divorce, but I have two children and I\u2019ve got to feed them and ministers make no money. So, if you don\u2019t mind, I\u2019m going to law school.\u201d [1] <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It took time, but Holmes eventually said \u201cyes\u201d to God\u2019s call. She encourages listeners to remain open and faithful to God\u2019s invitations to serve: <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n As I was standing at graduation from law school, I heard a voice say to me, \u201cThis isn’t it.\u201d And I kind of startled, and I said to my girlfriend who was standing in line with me to get our degrees, \u201cI just heard a voice say, \u2018This is not it.\u2019\u201d And she started laughing. She said, \u201cWell, you sure have wasted a lot of time.\u201d…<\/p>\n\n\n\n There was nothing to do but hear the whispering, continue my practices. And I now allow life to lead me to the precipice of the newness that was already seeded in my life…. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Trust God, trust Holy Spirit to lead you into all truth. Make your intention clear, that yes, you will follow as called, without exception. Just make your intention known to God and wait for the Holy Spirit to lead you into the fulfillment of your vocation. [2] <\/p>\n\n\n\n [1] Adapted from Barbara Holmes, \u201cCrisis Contemplation,\u201d CONSPIRE 2018 (Albuquerque, NM: Center for Action and Contemplation, 2018), conference talk. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There is a crisis of disobedience when we choose to disobey God\u2019s will for our lives. In this instance, I think of Jonah\u2026. He thinks he\u2019s right. He hates the Assyrians, and understandably so. After all, they were a marauding, land-grabbing nation, a real\u202fthreat to Israel. He had national pride. He wanted to see them […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mindbootcamp.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mindbootcamp.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mindbootcamp.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mindbootcamp.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mindbootcamp.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=414"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mindbootcamp.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":415,"href":"https:\/\/mindbootcamp.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414\/revisions\/415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mindbootcamp.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mindbootcamp.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mindbootcamp.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}