When the Call Comes

Matthew 7:7-11

If you have teen-agers, or have had teen-agers in your home, you undoubtedly understand the process of waiting for “the call.” Those of you who have teen-agers coming on will soon "get it." Until you’ve had your first one you don’t spend a lot of time thinking about it, but after the first one, you are constantly alert for the next one.

You hope the call will be for a ride home, or a “meet me at the mall and bring money”, or a spilled ketchup stain and the need for a change of clothes. You might even imagine that once in a while along the way they will call just to tell you “Happy Birthday,” or “I love you.” Sometimes it is more than that. Sometimes the calls are for really tough things, and sometimes it is someone else who is calling – the police, the nurse, the principal, or the pastor.

It’s not easy getting kids through to adulthood, and even then, until the Lord calls you home, you spend hours, nights, week-ends, worrying about them, hoping everything is OK, and finding some extra funds to help. Most kids get through all right, but not without a few problems, lots of distress about real or imagined difficulties, and most manage to create a couple of heart-stoppers for you.

Imagine then, how the Father lives with His children. Most of us are really pretty self-sufficient (we rarely ever call, if at all), some are constantly seeking more stuff (what we have is never enough) and many get into the communication mode only on those seemingly frequent occasions when everything else has failed. The command given to us in Jeremiah 33:3 goes unused, unknown, and untested. The promise of Matthew 7:7-11 never comes to fruition in our lives.

God’s kids know he has provided absolute sufficiency, but we refuse to appropriate it. We have little time to call, except, perhaps, when a problem arises. We create our own view of the world ignoring what we have been taught by His Word. We don’t or won’t remember from whence we came to life, and fail to appropriate even a meager portion of His bountiful grace.

Just as our kids often ignore us except when they want something, or seek our assistance only when they have to, so we are often like that with our Heavenly Father. He is available for a call from us when we need help. He is available for a call from us when we don’t need help.

Other people talk to Him about us, but He would prefer to hear directly from us – good or bad.