When Life Calls Your Name

Hi, friends, and welcome to the Weekly Dulin Podcast, a brief weekly reflection from Dulin United Methodist Church in Falls Church. Here, we take time to think together about faith, community, and what it means to live as disciples of Jesus in today's world.

Hello, Dulin Church. It's me, James, your pastor, and I'm delighted to be with you for this Dulin Weekly Moment, this Dulin Weekly Podcast that we share together as we think about things that matter to us in terms of the practicality of our faith, what we believe and we have the opportunity to push back on the various things we do or don't believe and I share some thoughts, mostly my own but that oftentimes arise from within the Wesleyan tradition, the United Methodist tradition. We are approaching the fifth Sunday in this season of Lent. If this is your first, broadcast, the first listening and you don't know what Lent is, just a brief overview. Lent is a season of preparation, forty days that leads up to the Easter season, which is fifty days.

And it is an opportunity, it's mirrored after Jesus forty days in the wilderness, a long time, it is a time to realign to figure out what is going on, to bring ourselves back to perhaps who we most think God wants us to be, who God most wants us to be, desires for us to be. As we're closing in on the end of Lent, getting closer to Easter, you might be with the practices you've either taken up or maybe the things that you've given up that you are in the process of fasting from that you're feeling kind of empty or numb. You might feel empty or numb completely apart from that because of all the things that are happening in the world, wars and the costs of living going up and up and lots of other challenges you may or may not know about and have seen in the larger world. There's a lot that the more we feel, the more we might find ourselves bound or shut up within in some ways. That kind of feeling that fits right in with the fifth Sunday in Lent as we're coming up on the story of Lazarus.

Lazarus is a good friend of Jesus who is very sick. Jesus gets the word and in the interim, Lazarus dies which leaves his two sisters grieving. Jesus grieving and by the time Jesus gets there, Lazarus has been in the tomb. I don't want to preview it too much because that's Sunday's sermon, but sometimes we feel bound up in this season. We feel numb on the inside, uncertain about what is next.

We're looking for a way to break out, to fit more into what God imagines for our life. That's why we've talked about Lent from the beginning as a season to align ourselves and realign ourselves with who God always intended we would be. God's desire for us, God's hope for us, and sometimes we just get a little bit off base. But also sometimes as we're trying to come back around to that grounding place, to that centering place, we can also feel like we can't break out, that we can't get where we're trying to go. And so I thought I would just talk about that a little bit here in the fifth week of Lent because we are invited not to be transformed all at once, but to move forward bit by bit.

We have to be willing to give ourselves over step by step. Getting to the end of any race, if you think of life as a race, that's just one metaphor. But if you think getting to the end, we have to you know step out one step in front of the other. Deciding we have faith is just perhaps the starting line. Deciding we don't have faith is just the starting line.

And then the hard work of it all is putting one foot in front of another until we you know, as we grow, as we learn, as we ripen, as we struggle, as we try to figure out how best to be the people God wants us to be. That's the Lenten season and what it's all about. It's about asking us to step back from some things, that's the fasting piece, or take up some things, that's the practice piece. And as we take them up, as we practice them, we might discover more and more who we are and on the other side who we're not, who God is really desiring for us to be. So the question for you is who is God desiring you to be and can you say, can you give an affirmative to what God wants for you?

Can you put that next foot in front of the other? Despite all the daunting challenges of what's going on in the world around us and all of the overwhelm that may cause within us or the fact that it leads us to a place where we sort of shut down, can't find a way forward, in the midst of that, can we perhaps can we perhaps say the little yeses that are necessary for us to move forward? Those are the kinds of things where we are trying to listen for God who is calling our name. God's always calling our name. The Lenten season invites us to recognize that calling and how it fits with, who we are meant to be.

Where are you feeling God calling your name? Where inside, where amongst the gifts you have, the personality traits you have, the passions you have about the world God has made, where do you hear God's voice calling you? How might you step out in faith? That's something worth pondering, worth journaling about if you're a journaler like I am. It's an opportunity to perhaps talk to people who you trust and care about you, to ask for some reflective conversation about what you're feeling God calling.

Certainly enough to slow down in this realignment process, enough to listen for that still small voice, that gentle blowing of the wind, that spiritual movement that is often so subtle we miss it. Well, Lent invites us to slow down enough so perhaps we don't miss it. We catch it as it's coming by. So where is God calling you? What might God be inviting you to in life?

Where might you step into a breach where you see a hole? Where might you stand up for someone who needs someone to stand up for them? Where might you give more of yourself? Where might you guard yourself and set up better boundaries so you are protected, from making decisions that leave you overwhelmed and overtaken? God is calling your name.

God is calling you out. God is calling you from the things that bind you, wants to bring healing and hope and wholeness into your life so that you might live more fully in the way God is calling you to. Those are my thoughts for this week. My fellow Dulin Church listeners and others, I hope that it might be helpful, these thoughts I shared. I look forward to sharing some deeper thoughts about Lazarus this coming Sunday.

Thanks for joining me. As always, if you have thoughts you'd like to share, if you'd like to ask questions or share your perspective that may be different from mine, please email me at pastordulinchurch dot org. I always welcome those kinds of conversations and invite you to do it. You're precious, you are a gift and it's a gift that you've been here. If this podcast has been meaningful, if this moment has been meaningful, I encourage you to share it with others.

Until the next time I see you, all the best.