Walking by Faith
How have you experienced God’s call? What a holy question this is to ask someone!
How people listen to God’s call – God’s invitation to their gifts for God’s mission—is not something people talk about every day. Even pastors!
In the first six months of the Graduate Preaching Fellowship, I have been asking a lot of questions and doing a lot of listening. What a gift it has been to hear nearly 50 theologians answer this question!
Scripture tells us “We walk by faith and not by sight” or as the contemporary paraphrase The Message puts it: “It’s what we trust in but don’t yet see that keeps us going” (2 Corinthians 5:7).
Solveig Lára Guðmundsdóttir , the second female bishop elected in Iceland, representing the North Iceland bishopric, has served the church for 32 years as pastor. In 1974, at 18 years of age she witnessed the ordination of the first woman pastor in Iceland, Rev. Auður Eir Vilhjálmsdóttir. (Solveig Lara was friends with her daughter, who became the second woman ordained and Solveig Lara became the third.)
Through this Lenten season, take time to look back over your life. Where have you seen God at work? What are the crossroads of your life where has God’s hand has guided you? Have a holy conversation with someone. It may help you to see God’s faithfulness in your own life more clearly, to witness to someone, and to strengthen your lives of faith.
“For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known” (1 Corinthians 13:12New Revised Standard Version, NRSV).
