Dai­ly Reflec­tion
Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001

Strange Choic­es

Per­son­nel depart­ments of uni­ver­si­ties and busi­ness­es spend hours por­ing over resumes and let­ters of rec­om­men­da­tion, look­ing for the “right” per­son to hire. The needs of a posi­tion matched with an appli­can­t’s ade­quate cre­den­tials are need­ed for the per­fect “fit.”

What­ev­er hap­pened that night when Jesus spent hours “in com­mu­nion with God” we don’t know for sure, but we look on with amaze­ment at “the Twelve” whom he select­ed from the dis­ci­ples to be his most inti­mate fol­low­ers and co-labor­ers. Of the twelve, here is a sam­pling of their “job per­for­mance”: one denied know­ing him when ques­tioned about their rela­tion­ship, two oth­ers were hot-tem­pered and rash (“Call down fire from heav­en to destroy them!”), one would­n’t believe with­out see­ing, and one, final­ly, betrayed him, hand­ing him over to those who would put him to death. So much for care­ful screening!

Or is some­thing else being said? With the excep­tion of the last, all under­went remark­able trans­for­ma­tions, con­ver­sions, lead­ing them to become fear­less pro­claimers of the Name, even to their own deaths. What are we to make of this? A con­cise phrase sums it up well: if it is true that God often calls those who are qual­i­fied, it is also true that he “qual­i­fies” those whom he calls. 

There is encour­age­ment here for all those who “have been called.” God often pro­vides “on the job train­ing,” draw­ing out of us what we did not know was there, and trans­form­ing us into his instru­ments in ways we could not pos­si­bly imag­ine. When faced with their inad­e­qua­cies, all with one excep­tion acknowl­edged their weak­ness and pro­fessed their faith anew. There­in is found the seed of con­ver­sion and deep­er wit­ness. Peter’s “Lord, you know that I love you” and Thomas’ “My Lord and my God” show us how to respond in the face of our own inad­e­qua­cies and failures. 

May we, in dis­cov­er­ing our short­com­ings, allow the Lord to “qual­i­fy” us for the task to which he has called us.