The little phone in your head is ringing, and you have to answer the call.

"Hello?"

"Hi, it's me again. I've been trying to reach you for a while now..."

"Sorry," you say. "Wrong number."

Click.

Whatever else the Old Testament is good for, one thing with which it is replete is examples of people who heard a call and tried to wriggle out of it. Take Moses. God shows up in a flaming shrubbery and gives Moses explicit commands--go here, do this. He assures Moses that He will be with him the whole way. And what does Moses say? "Oh please, Lord. Send someone else."

Or Jeremiah. God comes to him in a vision and says, "I've had you set aside to be a prophet since the beginning." To which Jeremiah responds, "Ah, ah, ah Lord. I do not know how to speak. I am only a child."

Gideon says, "How can I save Israel? Mine is the weakest clan in Manasseh. And I am the least of my clan!"

And so on. God calls us to task and we throw up every objection we can think of. I'm not good enough! I'm not strong enough! I'm not the one you want! Send someone else! How do I know you're really God anyway? Give me a sign! Even Jesus in his darkest hour asked that his cup be taken from him. So it's no shame if you don't want to answer. Almost nobody really does.

Notice that God himself does not deliver the people from Egypt. God himself does not liberate the tribes of Israel from the Midianites. God himself does not intervene when the kingdom of Judah is beset on all sides from Assyrians and Philistines and Edomites. God sends someone else to do the job. Why is that? Couldn't God have simply parted the sea and put a flaming arrow in the sky reading "This Way To The Promised Land?" Probably. But He didn't. He sent Moses instead. God likes underdogs. Gideon was a zero, a nobody. Jesus was the lowest form of life that anyone in Israel would have paid a moment's attention to. Do you think that in picking these losers to be his standard bearers that God intended to send the rest of us a message?

Oh yes. I think so.

God sees through our excuses like clear glass. He is not interested in our excuses; they're shallow, boring and self-serving. God is interested in our potential. God is interested in nourishing the seeds of goodness and love that are within us. When God sends us, He does not send us down primrose paths. He knew us before we were born; He knit us together in our mothers' wombs. He knows what to do with us. He says, "The gifts I gave you come with some assembly required. Here's a screwdriver."

Do we really want a life of ease, where nothing is required of us and everything comes easily? Do we want a life without suffering, where everything that happens is perfectly aligned with our desires and we're never harmed? What transformation could possibly take place in the course of such a life?

In the same way that loving parents don't spare their children hardship and suffering, God does not spare us these things. We want our children to become mature; we want them to join us in the adult world with the understanding and experience that is the badge of adulthood. God wants the same for us, only moreso. If I followed my daughters around and did everything for them, kept them from having to work or struggle, they would eventually decide that they themselves were worthless. If, however, I stand back and let them try and sometimes fail, offering guidance and correction when needed, then we have both succeeded. We are both doing something of great value. This, I think, is how God deals with us. That's why God sent Moses off to do God's work. That's why Jesus didn't throw himself down on the rocks at the Devil's suggestion to try and prove how much God loved him.

Listen. God is meaning. When we do something meaningful, we do God's work. When we do God's work, God dwells within us. That's why God's will for us is our meaning. That's what we're here for.

Let's agree to drop just one of those excuses this week. You want to? Are you with me? Here's mine: Lord, I can't follow the call into ordained ministry because I can't afford to quit my well-paying job and go to seminary, nor can I support my family on a pastor's salary.

What would Jesus say to that one? Any guesses? How much sympathy do you think Christ would have had for such an excuse? Money wasn't evil to Jesus--it was irrelevant. What's evil is when we place this irrelevancy over something in our lives that has real value: joy, love, self-respect, meaning.

Pray with me today that with God's help we can let go of our excuses and move forward into something new.