I think when I was a younger Christian and then when I became a young rookie minister,  I somehow picked up the idea that faithfulness in a calling meant doing the same thing forever.

That was not the case for Ezekiel. The whole of his life as a child, a teenager and a young adult was dominated by the call to be a priest, serving in the temple in Jerusalem. However in the year of his 30th birthday, the appointed time for him to begin his priestly duties, he found himself in exile in Babylon. There, the man living for so long under a call to be a priest had fresh visions of God and was called to be a Prophet. His ministry as a Prophet still continues today in the form of his rather wonderful but definitely weird book.

Continuing faithfulness in the one direction is a good thing, but the experience of Ezekiel reminds us that God may call us to make a switch in direction and accept a new commission, a new call from Him. Are you open to being surprised by God? Open to doing something radically different? Perhaps He is beckoning to you right now, but you are refusing his invitation mistaking it as a temptation into unfaithfulness or disobedience?

Let me earth this in less lofty terms as to what that can look like. In Shotts Prison at the Church service this week I was talking to one of the remarkable volunteer church visitors. She is retired and simply made this comment: “I never intended to do this when I retired. I just somehow found myself doing it and giving more and more time to it,  and don’t quite know how, but I love it.” Her eyes were full of light, love, emotion and excitement as she spoke. It was a bit like Ezekiel is very humble guise. At a time of her life, in her case Retirement, which she had maybe pondered and imagined in the years leading up to it, all of a sudden things were other than she had imagined.

Has something come to an end for you? Has a door shut that you had hoped would open. That may be where a fresh adventure in God awaits you!

God bless

Kenny