Encountering the Holy
Fred Craddock tells this story:
I recall preaching in a university church in Norman, Oklahoma, some years ago, when a young woman came up to me after the service. I had preached on the call of the disciples. She came up and said she wanted to talk with me and said, “I’m in med school here, and that sermon clinched what I’ve been struggling with for some time.”
“What’s that” I respond.
“Dropping out of med school.”
“What do you want to do that for?”
She said she was going to go work in the Rio Grande Valley. She said, “I believe that’s what God wants me to do.” She quit med school, went to Rio Grande Valley, sleeps under a piece of tin in the back of a pickup truck and teaches little children while their parents are out in the field. She dropped out of med school for this, and her folks back in Montana are saying, “What in the world happened?”
And now I’m saying to her parents, “Well, now, I was just preaching, I didn’t mean to, you know.”
For some people encountering the holy is an inner release that sets their lives ablaze. But for most of us, being called by God is obscure and, honestly, scary.
I mean no one in their right mind would give up a promising career in medicine to follow God to the Rio Grande Valley – would they? No one in their right mind would give up the chance for money, fame, and privilege for empty calories, poverty, and homelessness in return. No one would, if they knew better, leave the social interconnectedness of family to follow a hunch, a feeling, and dare I say, a conviction.
I too know what it’s like to encounter the holy. But I know it as a moment in which I felt ashamed.
It was on a Saturday afternoon on the floor of my freshman dorm I found myself on my knees asking for forgiveness of sins and not expecting what I got in return. God revealed God’s self to me. I encountered the holy. I came face to face with the divine. And I promise you, it was the most sacred and scariest moment of my life.
When we come face to face with Christ – our woundedness is revealed. Our shame uncovered. Our sins are laid bare. God sees us for the shamefulness that we are.
And yet God calls us none the less.
When you encounter the holy, you feel ashamed, unworthy, and scared. But simultaneously you feel loved, accepted, and cherished. You feel as if you belong. You feel as if you have been forgiven. You feel as if you are a part of a much more important story. When you encounter the holy, everything changes. It has to change. Nothing is the same. Memories are different. Lives are different. Ambitions are different. Hopes and dreams are different. You enter into a worldview that is different.
So with all too clear of certainty I heard, I felt, I embodied Jesus calling me off the dorm floor. He told me I was forgiven and that something much bigger than my guilty conscious was at stake. I knelt before the Lord seeking forgiveness, and when I arose I was asked to follow.
Choosing to follow Jesus may bring on a few socially negative implications, but the reward far exceeds the threats. The reward supersedes the implications. The reward is eternal.
I know for me, following Jesus has been completely worth it. I have a relationship that allows me to find my true self, and feel as if life carries with it meaning and purpose. And at the same time, my commitment to follow Jesus has allowed me to not only find my true self, but also help others too. My identity is now in Christ, and my heart allows me to care for the souls of God’s people.
Choosing to follow Jesus may bring on a few socially negative implications, but the reward far exceeds the threats. The reward supersedes the implications. The reward is eternal.
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