"What do you want me to do, Lord?"

I’ll never forget my first calling into ministry.  I was in India at the time, sowing some last adventurous oats before returning to the states.  I had spent the last two years in Africa, serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in a small mountainous village.  It was there that I gave my life to Christ and began a life-long process of letting go of my own plans and letting God direct my path.

The Lord had started “rewriting my script” almost immediately.  My college years had been spent on two primary vocations: partying and getting into medical school.  I was in Africa when I got the letter of acceptance.  I should have been the happiest man alive.  Yet as my Muslim friends were preparing for a magnanimous party, I held the letter in my hands, that key to my gloried future, and felt nothing but emptiness.  It was my first introduction to the process of discernment, the art of figuring out what God really wants us to do in life.

Fast-forward now to India.  After saying no to med school, I had spent nearly every waking moment with God asking him one primary question: “What do you want me to do, Lord?”  Of course I was thinking big things, consequential things, things that would redeem my decision to sacrifice a career in medicine.  Thoughts of scaling mountains and dangerous missions into forgotten jungles danced through my head.  Surely the Lord had “big” plans for me and I was ready for any challenge, anything to share the glorious story of Christ, a story that had changed my life.

And then the moment came.  It was about 10:40am in Jaipur (NW India) and I was praying.  “Lord, what do you want me to do?  You know I’ll do anything.”  The Lord spoke these simple words to me: “Go home and love your mother.”  I thought I had misheard, or perhaps God didn’t quite understand my question.  I rallied, “No God, I’m giving my entire life and my future to you.  I’ll do whatever you want.  I’ll go to the farthest lands and endure the most challenging circumstances – BIG things, Lord.  Just tell me what to do!”  Yet the message was unchanging: “Go home and love your mother.”

Somewhat deflated but nonetheless obedient, I returned home.  It has taken me years to understand the power and import of that first calling.  Though I didn’t know it at the time, it was indeed my first calling into ministry.  I have come to understand that as Christians ours is a call to reconciliation.  The apostle Paul reminds us that after we are renewed in Christ, when the old has gone and the new has come, Jesus gives us the very “ministry of reconciliation”(2 cor 5:18).  And so it was with me.

God didn’t need me in sweeping programs and global movements.  He wanted me to focus on people.  And not strangers in exotic and faraway places but people right here at home, people quite close to me, people who need to understand reconciliation with God through the tangible reality of reconciliation with me.  More than anything else in the world, it was the relationship with my own mother that needed mending.  Before I could move on to any "bigger" reconciliation project, I would have reconcile things much closer to home.

In this Week of Prayer for Christian Unity[1], we are tempted to think about ecumenism in terms of grandiose movements and official declarations between church leaders.  Yet I think God would guide us to something more personal, something closer to the beating heart of Young Life.  Not programs, but people.  Spend a moment to pause and reflect.  What does God's call mean for you, “Go home and love your mother, your father, your brother, your friend, your neighbor”? "Go home and love the Catholic, the Evangelical, the conservative, the liberal, the fundamentalist."  We are one body, called to love and reconciliation in Christ Jesus.  God is calling, each and every one of us, “home.”

This picture taken in Calcutta (Dec 1998), just before coming home.

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[1]             I encourage you to explore the beautiful richness of this Week of Prayer for Christian Unity by visiting the World Council of Churches webpage at: http://www.oikoumene.org/en/programmes/unity-mission-evangelism-and-spirituality/spirituality-and-worship/week-of-prayer-for-christian-unity.html.  Grounded in the prayerful question of the prophet Micah, “What does God require of us?”, the 2013 resource guide (or “brochure”) reminds us that Christian unity can never be separated from humility, kindness and a commitment to justice.