{"id":22014,"date":"2023-01-12T10:08:38","date_gmt":"2023-01-12T15:08:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=22014"},"modified":"2023-01-12T10:16:22","modified_gmt":"2023-01-12T15:16:22","slug":"a-call-to-awakening","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=22014","title":{"rendered":"A Call to Awakening"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-embed-handler wp-block-embed-embed-handler wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Don&#039;t Lose Heart - Steven Curtis Chapman [Lyric Video]\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/0mhMaLRdVvU?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Richard reflects on what it means to respond to God\u2019s call of love and justice for the common good:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What, then, does it mean to follow Jesus?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>History is continually graced with people who somehow learned to act beyond and outside their self-interest and for the good of the world, people who clearly operated by a power larger than their own. <strong>Consider Gandhi, Oskar Schindler, Martin Luther King Jr. Add to them Rosa Parks, Mother Teresa, Dorothy Day, \u00d3scar Romero, C\u00e9sar Ch\u00e1vez, and many unsung leaders. Their inspiring witness offers us strong evidence that the mind of Christ still inhabits the world. <\/strong>Most of us are fortunate to have crossed paths with many lesser-known persons who exhibit the same presence. I can\u2019t say how one becomes such a person. All I can presume is that they were all called. <strong>They all had their Christ moments, in which they stopped denying their own shadows, stopped projecting those shadows elsewhere, and agreed to own their deepest identity in solidarity with the world.&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But it is not an enviable position, this Christian thing.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Following Jesus is a vocation to share the fate of God for the life of the world.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To allow what God for some reason allows\u2014and uses.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And to suffer ever so slightly what God suffers eternally.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Often, this has little to do with believing the right things about God\u2014beyond the fact that God is love itself.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Those who respond to the call and agree to carry and love what God loves\u2014which is both the good and the bad\u2014and to pay the price for its reconciliation within themselves, these are the followers of Jesus Christ. They are the leaven, the salt, the remnant, the mustard seed that God uses to transform the world. <\/strong>The cross, then, is a very dramatic image of what it takes to be <em>usable<\/em> for God. I<strong>t does not mean they are going to heaven and others are not; rather, it means they have entered into heaven much earlier and thus can see things in a transcendent, whole, and healing way now.&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Saints are those who wake up while in this world, i<\/strong>nstead of waiting for the next one. Francis of Assisi, William Wilberforce, Th\u00e9r\u00e8se of Lisieux, and Harriet Tubman didn\u2019t feel superior to anyone else; they just knew they had been let in on a big divine secret, and they wanted to do their part in revealing it.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>God is calling <em>every one and every thing, not just a few chosen ones, <\/em>to God\u2019s self<\/strong> (Genesis 8:15\u201317; Ephesians 1:9\u201310; Colossians 1:15\u201320). To get every one and every thing there, <strong>God first needs models and images who are willing to be \u201cconformed to the body of his death\u201d and transformed into the body of his resurrection (Philippians 3:10). These are the \u201cnew creation\u201d (Galatians 6:15), and their transformed state is still seeping into history and ever so slowly transforming it into \u201clife and life more abundantly\u201d <\/strong>(John 10:10).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>________________________________________<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sarah Young<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Let Me prepare you for your day. not try to anticipate your day or the issues of your day. You can best prepare by spending time with Me. My abiding presence is the best road map available to you. Surrender your day, moments and plans to Me. It is the best roadmap available.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Exodus 33:14 \u201cMy Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>John 15:4-7 Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Richard reflects on what it means to respond to God\u2019s call of love and justice for the common good: What, then, does it mean to follow Jesus? History is continually graced with people who somehow learned to act beyond and outside their self-interest and for the good of the world, people who clearly operated by [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22014"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22014"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22014\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22020,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22014\/revisions\/22020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}