FALL 2004
ear Friends,
As Friends, we often speak of leadings. Like many of you, I give a lot of thought to what they are and how we engage in discernment around them. I’d like to share some of my recent thinking on this subject. I have nothing new to say, really, but it is frequently helpful to reexamine the old, whether in traditional or in fresh ways. I will briefly describe three broad categories of leadings which share characteristics but which also have unique qualities: the leading to do, to relate, and to be.
We may be led to take some particular action: to send someone a letter, to volunteer at a soup kitchen, to mow the meetinghouse lawn. There are thousands of examples. When we take action we usually do so without knowing what the outcome will be. We act in faith, in obedience, in love, or in all three, often without fully understanding why this is the time to act or why we were the ones led to act. We act knowing we may never see the fruit of our work, yet we know that to not take that action would be unfaithful. Perhaps a month, or year, or half a lifetime later, we gain greater understanding or see some fruit. The fruit is not always external; it may be a change, perhaps a deepening of faith, love, or understanding, within us. An action may be for us a quickly forgotten one-time event, yet it may unforgettably impact others for good (or ill!). Some actions place us or others on a course we could never have imagined, as when Moses went to Pharaoh to demand he let God’s people go.
When we act, we cannot know in advance what the outcome will be for us or for others. In God’s garden, our job may be to plow, to sow, to fertilize, to tend, or to harvest. In a sense, it is ultimately all the same work. The harvester is not greater than any other worker. We work together and benefit from the work of others. Indeed we often harvest what we have not sown.
Some leadings involve ongoing commitment, as when one is led into marriage, or to membership in a religious community. To act on such a leading is to embark on a journey, to begin a dynamic give-and-take process with another individual or group. It may be a relationship of obedience and service, such as responding to an invitation to teach a First-day School class, to serve on a committee, or to drop one’s nets and follow Jesus. The fruits of responding faithfully to a genuine leading of this type are realized over time in the doing. We can never know the full outcome of our relating, especially in how it affects others, but we experience changes in ourselves, whether subtle or dramatic, gradual or sudden.
The call to be touches the very core of who we are. It is more properly a call than a leading. It may be the call to be open and vulnerable, or to be courageous in the face of adversity. It may be the call to not be conformed to the world, but transformed by the renewing of our minds. It may be the call to realize who we were created to be—and this takes a lifetime. When we are fully ourselves as daughters and sons of God—with all that that means--then all our relating and all our doing, whether as individuals or as a community, are essentially in unity with our being and in harmony with the divine.
These three types of leadings are experienced differ ently in the heart, yet they are all parts of the same fabric. The one same God is behind each, giving each life and vitality. I pray God will grant us all the grace, wisdom, courage, and patience to be who we were created to be—a people, God’s people—and that all we are and do, and all the ways we relate, will be to God’s honor and glory. The starting time and place is always the eternal now. We act on what we know, employing the best individual and group discernment practices possible, and God provides the next step. When we act on what we know to be loving, just, and true—whether it be in our doing, relating, or being—the good we do not know will be revealed to us. The future unfolds. All shall be well.
In the love that makes us one,
—Michael Gibson, clerkRETURN TO TABLE OF CONTENTS
Last modified:
Saturday, August 28, 2004 at 09:52 PM
