I had rather imagined the call
a holy draft notice, to which
the servant must be ready to
resign herself: "Set your affairs
in order, for I am about
to take you from your father's house
and to a place you do not know."
Yes, with peace and sustenance,
but surely greater fortitude
than any normal person has.
I never realized--
Until it had already happened--
The brave resignation, if you
can call it that, is given not
to a mission, for a nation;
the death to self does not begin
in some famed mud hut on the field;
but on a weekday in your bedroom
where the only reason you had
to open to extremity
was that God is there; your only
impulse was His heart.
As to my call to missions, well--
There was no tearful altar call,
Just the afternoon I noticed
everything else was diminished
bleak as impossibility,
I could not be content at home
while I could leap into the wide
embrace, however desolate.
The wonder is to realize
my call resembles nothing so much
as falling in love,
complete with that private eternity
where I whisper again and again,
"God is so good. God is so good."
