The Second Call?
Last night I finished reading a book that I'd started a couple of weeks ago, sitting on an old BA 737 flying to Sarajevo. It shouldn't have taken that long to finish; it was a slim volume. Nevertheless, I felt like I was fighting, page by page, to conquer 'The Ragamuffin Gospel' - that is, until I reached chapter nine.
Suddenly a book that had seemed slightly disjointed and not much in tune with my life experience was speaking straight at me, articulating my feelings with a clarity I doubt I could have mustered myself. It was suggesting many between the age of thirty and sixty experience a 'second call' - Rowan and I sit very much at the younger end of that spectrum!
"The second call invites us to serious reflection of the nature and quality of our faith in the gospel of grace, our hope in the new and not yet, and our love for God and people. The second call is a summons to a deeper, more mature commitment of faith where the naiveté, first fervour, and untested idealism of the morning and the first commitment have been seasoned with pain, rejection, failure, loneliness, and self-knowledge."
That paragraph alone made the rest of the book worthwhile for me. That is exactly what I'd been feeling. I've said it before but life is going to be completely different. Are we experiencing a 'second call'? Who knows? Whatever it is, I wasn't expecting it but I'm glad it's happening!
Suddenly a book that had seemed slightly disjointed and not much in tune with my life experience was speaking straight at me, articulating my feelings with a clarity I doubt I could have mustered myself. It was suggesting many between the age of thirty and sixty experience a 'second call' - Rowan and I sit very much at the younger end of that spectrum!
"The second call invites us to serious reflection of the nature and quality of our faith in the gospel of grace, our hope in the new and not yet, and our love for God and people. The second call is a summons to a deeper, more mature commitment of faith where the naiveté, first fervour, and untested idealism of the morning and the first commitment have been seasoned with pain, rejection, failure, loneliness, and self-knowledge."
That paragraph alone made the rest of the book worthwhile for me. That is exactly what I'd been feeling. I've said it before but life is going to be completely different. Are we experiencing a 'second call'? Who knows? Whatever it is, I wasn't expecting it but I'm glad it's happening!
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