Frederick Buechner, Christian author, once wrote, “The place God calls you to is the place where your deepest gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” That’s a great way of saying, if the thing you love to do somehow serves the greater good, consider yourself blessed. Communion with God is somehow connected to our capacity to take what we’ve been given and share it with those who need it in this world. Martin Luther might have called it the vocation of the baptized, or our Christian calling. I was called to ministry at age 14, by Bernie Gigliotti, an obese diabetic Lebanese Lutheran with a bad comb-over who sat in the back pew every Sunday at my home church. He told me, after I had begun serving as a communion assistant and lector, that I should become a pastor. Thanks a lot Bernie. Don’t know why I listened to Bernie. But hear I am. We are where we are for many reasons, often too complicated to connect to one thing. To say I live here because of my job is not entirely true or false. We are where we are. Same with what we have. Some of it we earn, some we inherit, some we make, some we receive as gift. Some things we gain thoughtlessly at the expense of others. Some things we have, cost us dearly. Some things we have require responsibility and some things we have don’t. I have golf clubs. They were a birthday gift. I am not obligated to them. They don’t require much. I don’t use them much either. For the way I play, the clubs and a few other people are probably glad I don’t. But I also have three sons---also birthday gifts, not my birthday theirs. With them comes all kinds of responsibility and obligation, all of which I take on most gratefully. I am their dad. They are my boys. You get my point. We receive much in this life. From beginning to end. How we treat what we have received makes a difference. Not all things are treated equally. Hopefully, human relationships are the most valuable. In this life, how we manage what we have is important.
