There is a very special call from God that lets you know that it is your call and that no one else can respond to it quite like you can. It brings with it a kind of holy, inexplicable energy.
Your call may be teaching or preaching, caring for others or working with children, tending the sick or lifting up those who live in poverty. Your call may take you down your street or halfway across the world. But when you hear your call and know it, you will also know the feeling of that holy energy. There’s really nothing quite like it. Its precisely the reason that no human has enough power to thwart your call for any reason — for being a woman, or being too old, too young, too inexperienced. No human can steal the holy energy of your call!
Preaching releases every kind of holy energy for me. Preaching creates in me a unique awareness of my body, mind and spirit. It is, above all, a soul exercise that brings me fresh new life. That’s the best way I can describe the event we call preaching, at least from my view. But it is so much more than just an event; it is a 20 minute pursuit of truth, inspiration and spirit movement. It is for the hearer and for the proclaimer, for both are in this place of spiritual replenishment in need of new awakening to the things of God.
Last fall, I preached at my church in Macon. It was a rare opportunity, a red-letter day really. It was the first time I had preached since my illness. It had been roughly five years since I stood in a pulpit to do what I have been called to do. Those who have a similar calling probably know the angst of not preaching when God has called you, for God’s call is a lifelong agreement. For me, there is something life-giving in the act of preaching a sermon. I experience a special connection to the congregation that feels as if it moves by the wind of the Spirit.
So it would not be an exaggeration to say that I miss preaching deeply. I miss being a pastor. I miss creating worship experiences for a congregation.
But back to the opportunity to preach at my church . . .
I was looking forward to the holy energy, hoping it would come back to me after so long a time. And this was such an important life event for me that I had several conversations with “my village.” Most importantly, I had a conversation with my former pastor and colleague in ministry from the previous church I served in Little Rock. I think I needed some encouragement that I could still preach after so many years of illness. The words — the right words — came just in time from a person I will always consider to be my pastor. He is a person I greatly admire, and a male minister who knows how to serve a congregation in mutuality and communion with a woman. He is a minister who embodies that holy energy I’m talking about, and he inspires others to find or reclaim their holy energy.
How rare it is to enjoy the interrelationship and kinship of male and female in mission and ministry! I miss the time we served New Millennium Church together. I miss Wendell Griffen’s support, encouragement and respect. So when we exchanged messages that day, his words were the right words, the words I really needed to hear, so transformative for me in that moment that I copied them to my journal. This is what I wrote:
From Wendell, September 30, 2018:
“Praying for and with you, Kathy! Preach like only you can! New Millennium is praying with you, Reverend!”
It occurs to me that all of us need encouragement at times. We need persons who will cheer us on, persons who will believe in us when we don’t believe so much in ourselves. For me it was an illness that interrupted my life. For others a life interruption can be any sort of change — the loss of a job, the loss of a loved one, dealing with an empty nest, moving to another home, leaving a church and searching for another church. For whatever reason, life interruptions do hold some measure of power that can break us down and assault our confidence.
It is no big news to know that life interruptions can throw us face-down in the dirt, and it is extremely important for us to have the fortitude and the will to pick ourselves up and dust ourselves off. It’s not so easy to do that for so many reasons. With self confidence eroded, we can be motionless, bereft of spirit, with little energy left.
So then, we must do two things to make sure that we can reposition ourselves — upright and moving forward after a life interruption. The first is to recall the Divine promises of a God who always holds us up. These are three of the promises that give me hope:
We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed . . .So we do not lose heart . . . For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure.
— 2 Corinthians 4:8-9; 16,17 NRSV
And after you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, support, strengthen, and establish you.
— 1 Peter 5:10 NRSV
Thus says God, the Lord . . .
I am the Lord, I have called you in righteousness,
I have taken you by the hand and kept you;
I have given you as a covenant to the people,
a light to the nations,
to open the eyes that are blind,
to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon,
from the prison those who sit in darkness.
— Isaiah 42:5-7 NRSV
The second thing we must do is to surround ourselves with a community of care, love and grace — individuals who will listen, understand and always encourage. The book of Hebrews offers us good instruction to “consider how to stir up one another to love and good works.” (Hebrews 10:24 RSV)
Each person has the opportunity to open up their hearts and spirits to the calling of God. Each person will hear the call to mission in their own way. Each person will decide whether or not to respond to God’s call on their life. But all of us — together in community — will be able to hear God’s call clearer and find in ourselves more courage to follow. Community, when it is genuine, is like that.
I hope that you will find your genuine community as you listen for God’s call to you, the call that no other person can fulfill. I hope that you will experience holy energy, that fire in your bones that no human can extinguish. There’s really nothing quite like it!
Yesterday was not my best day. All day long challenges got the best of me — health challenges, schedule challenges, even bad haircut challenges. My sister of the heart, Donna, said I was cranky. My husband, Fred, said I should chalk it up to Ash Wednesday. Martie, my dear Little Rock friend, said that yesterday was the first day of Mercury in retrograde and that I should do my
“I have calmed and quieted my soul.” Words from the Psalmist.
It’s one of those Mondays again, those days that just weigh on you a bit too heavily. You have to push yourself to start a new week. You feel that deep-down tiredness that overcomes you and you don’t even know why. Know the feeling?
I seldom talk much about the spiritual disciplines that have given me strength. A private retreat — just me and God — in a beautifully isolated hermitage was one of the most powerful spiritual experiences of my life. While there, I also practiced another of my spiritual disciplines — iconography.
In describing the purpose of icons, the early Christians used the Greek work anagogic, literally meaning “leading one upward.” Photios Kontoglou, a renowned modern iconographer, expressed this perfectly: “Icons raise the soul and mind of the believer who sees the icon to the realm of the spirit, of the incorruptible, of the kingdom of God, as far as this can be achieved with material means.”
My love of iconography resulted from the prompting of my dear Aunt Eirene. She was an artist extraordinaire and a gifted iconographer. She studied and practiced to hone her skills and each year, she went to an intensive iconography workshop at a beautiful retreat center. One year, she persuaded me (forced is a more accurate term) to go with her. Of course, I was extremely reticent to try this new art form.
She was so wise. I began to think more about the Christ Child’s eyes than my own art, and within a day, my iconography transformed from a painting to a prayer. It was worship, meditation and reverence. It touched my soul as I added color to the board, layer upon layer. It was an incredible experience to see the Light. I share with you here some of icons I created, as I remember the experience I had with each of them that opened my soul to the Light.
Christ-followers will always know ascent and descent, knowing and not-knowing. I can recall so many spiritual retreats that ended too soon, leaving me with a reluctance to go back into ordinary time. I wanted to stay in the place where God’s Spirit was moving within me. But every single time, I had to go home, leaving the mountaintop of my transformative spiritual experience.
I asked my husband a rather strange question last night. It was about my recent preaching at First Baptist Church of Christ in Macon. This was how I posed the question to him:
On this day — the day we usually spend celebrating America each year — some of us are lamenting because we don’t feel much like celebrating. The children and families separated at our borders leave us feeling deep-down-where-it-hurts grief. And it is not that we look at the border fiasco as the crisis “du jour.” No. The toddlers in detention centers have come on the heels of the Parkland shooting and the protests it sparked around the nation and throughout the world when all of us cried out in unified voice, “Not our children,”
June 16, 2012 . . . My three-year-old granddaughter standing among the bronze sculptures of The Little Rock Nine.
And my granddaughter stands in front of Little Rock Central High, a school she may choose to attend someday, a school she will be able to attend because The Little Rock Nine took a dangerous risk to make it possible.
Finally, my granddaughter stands playfully on the steps of the Arkansas State Capitol. I know that it is possible that she may one day proudly walk through its golden doors as a state senator or representative. That is possible because nine Little Rock students were brave enough to be a part of changing history.
To bring a bit of grace to your day, I offer prayers and blessings that have stood the test of time. Some of them have been used for centuries to lighten a load or brighten a day. In the great tradition of Celtic prayers and blessings, many of these are very much prayers and reflections from daily life, the ebb and flow of ordinary day to day life. They are petitions of the home and hearth.
Prayer for evening rest
I arise today
Blessings of light
Through the day
Comings and goings
Morning mist
This day and every day
God of the Sparrow 🌱 By Kathy Manis Findley 