It begins in our childhoods.  It goes something like this, “Shirley, why did you bite your brother?”  “Because he kept bothering me!” comes the answer.  “Johnny, why don’t you have your homework?”  “Well, I did it, but the dog ate it.”

            The issues become a bit more serious as we grow into adulthood.  “So, Ms. Smith, why exactly is it that you were going 20 miles per hour over the speed limit?”  “Well, I lost my keys.  I was running late for work, and now I am making up for lost time.”  Or how about this one, “Why is it that you don’t have money for groceries this week when you just got paid a few days ago?”  “Well, you see my friends and I went shopping and I hadn’t bought any clothes or any new shoes for a long time, and besides everything I bought was ON SALE!”

            You might have guessed that what I’m talking about is excuse making!  We practice it until it becomes a fine art.  We practice to such a degree that sometimes it becomes difficult for us to recognize when the excuse has validity and when it’s just something made up in the moment to try to get us off the hook.  The sad thing is that we practice it so much with people in the world around us that it becomes easy and natural to offer excuses to God as well.

            We could talk about Moses called by God to go to pharaoh, to appeal to him to let the people of Israel leave slavery in Egypt and to head to the promised land.  We could talk about the prophet Elijah called by God to go to a widow’s house and appeal to her for food and lodging. Then comes the story of Jeremiah.  The calling from God is to be a prophet—to speak messages to people as God instructs.

            Common to all these stories is offering excuses to God.  Both Moses and Jeremiah say that they are not good public speakers.  Jeremiah also adds that he is very young and fears that he is not experienced enough to live into God’s calling.  The widow is poor and is in fear of being unable to support not only herself but also her young son.  She finds it hard to envision how she could possible open up her tiny supply of meal and oil to make food for the stranger at her door.  It’s a reasonable and understandable excuse, don’t you think?

            In each of the stories God has a ready response.  To Moses he promises Aaron to go alongside and to assist in the work to be done.  To the widow God promises that as she practices generosity she will never have an empty cupboard.  To Jeremiah he promises his presence to guide and direct his steps, and he promises to put words in Jeremiah’s mouth—precisely the words Jeremiah needs to speak for all situations!

            The calling of God is not a thing of the past.  It did not happen only to Old Testament or New Testament peoples.  God calls each one of us—some in specialized ways as ministers, as missionaries, as Directors of Christian Education, or Youth, or Music.  God calls others to be strong Christian laypersons—persons who use their witness in the world as they go about their jobs. 

            Will we hear God’s voice?  What will be our response?  Will we offer excuses—too old, too young, too inexperienced, wouldn’t know where to begin?  Or will we respond to God, “Here am I.  I will trust you to be with me.  I will trust you to put the right words in my mouth.  I will be your witness wherever you choose to send me.”  This we may know for a certainty—to do God’s bidding is to experience a blessing in our lives! 

I’ve always lived in the south—never in a place where the snow comes and stays forever, where it becomes increasingly dirty brown, where residents wish upon wish that it would go away and never come again!  Instead the snow comes in the south as a wonder and a surprise.  It visits its beauty upon us in ways that we are captivated, held in its mystery! 

I can’t even begin to guess the number of hours I have sat in a window seat watching God’s magic mounding up one flake at a time right before my very eyes!  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve stood outside gazing up into the gray sky with a cascade of flakes falling in my face! 

Our lives oftentimes are anything but blankets of beautiful white snow visiting themselves upon the world.  Instead we visit the world—people around us--with bitterness, anger held onto for decades, resentment, jealousy, a host of negative emotions.  We cling to negative emotions as if they were the last few valuable coins in our pockets.  We tell the same wrong-done-to-me stories as if they were gems of literature the world eagerly awaits.  And sometimes our bitterness and resentment build to the point that we lash out—return evil for evil.  Like blankets of snow that’s stayed too long and experienced too much traffic our lives and our relationships become—dirty, dingy, soiled beyond being recognition.

The words of Isaiah begin without a pat on the back for the nation Israel.  Israel is worshipping God.  She is making sacrifices at the altar—all the right things it would seem to readers of this segment of scripture.  How many modern day preachers wouldn’t be overjoyed at church members SHOWING UP?  How many modern day preachers wouldn’t be ecstatic at church members not only SHOWING UP but also PLACING AN OFFERING IN THE PLATE AS IT IS PASSED?

Yet, God rejects the actions of Israel.  “It’s not enough,” says God, “not enough to show up, to sit on a pew.  It’s not enough to place a check in the offering plate as it is passed.  Instead what is pleasing to me is a heart given to me—a heart for me to remold and to remake according to my plan.  Work of the heart comes first and foremost.  A right heart creates the possibility for right worship!  A right heart creates the possibility for right living one with another!”

Isaiah’s listeners must have had moments of scratching their heads and looking puzzled.  After all they felt that they were fairly good people, doing most of the right things in life—going to work, taking care of their families.  How could God be so disappointed in them and reject much of what they were doing?  But more importantly what were they to do in response to God’s words—work harder, try harder in their relationships, work all the more to forgive and forget?

But then the message clicks.  It’s not about them.  It’s not about working harder.  It’s not something that they can accomplish in and of themselves.  Instead what God is asking is for them to open their hearts up to him.  Open their hearts so he can make them into the people he wants them to be.  And God, through the prophet Isaiah, says, “Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow!”

It’s ALWAYS a good place to start—with God, in prayer, asking God to do the things in your life you haven’t been able to do for yourself.  You’ve tried and been unsuccessful at forgiving a family member wrong done long ago.  You’ve worked and worked at telling new stories—not the same wrong-done-to-me stories that took place thirty years ago, but somehow you haven’t been able to let them go and to begin to write new stories.  Hear God’s invitation, “Open your heart to me.  Allow me to do the work that I want to do.  Let me make your life as white as the snow and full of incredible new possibilities that are beyond your imagination!”

My step-dad worked hard in a textile mill for very little money.  My mom stayed home, took care of my brother and me, and was a dressmaker earning a few extra dollars a week.  Ours was a luxury-free home, but somehow my parents knew the value of regular saving, some of which provided a week-long beach vacation for the family as the mill closed down over the week of the 4^th of July.

My brother and I learned to ride the waves on the floats we were able to buy fresh and new almost every year as we arrived at the beach.  Hour by hour we relaxed into the waves as the tides came and went in each day’s time. 

Now I admit to moments of alarm.  After all my dad had drowned while on a fishing trip when I was only a year old!  But despite the alarm buttons that occasionally sounded, I learned to love the waves which seemed to wash all my cares away. 

In the night the “washing” continued!   Our beachfront house rested on stilts. As my brother and I relaxed into our single beds, our bodies still tired from the day’s activity, we could still almost feel the movement of the ocean around our bodies.  The feeling of movement was compounded by the ever-present sound of the waves as the tide came in and crashed beneath the house!

To this day I love to ride the waves.  I suppose I’ve outgrown the need for a float.  My body is enough.  I simply bend over, relax my back, and my whole body is afloat, riding the waves as certainly as on air-filled layers of plastic purchased at the corner gift shop. 

I confess—when I’m out there I still have moments of panic.  I still stand up, look around, check to see if I’ve floated down the beach too far or if I’ve moved out much farther from the shore than I had intended.  I even confess that sometimes I make sure there are persons much farther out in the water than I should any unexpected shark activity begin to take place!  But for the most part I relax.  I can’t think of any other times or places that I am more relaxed than when I’m out in the water, giving my whole body over to the action of the waves!  Faith is a lot like that. 

Things happen to us in our lives, in the lives of our families, and in our churches.  Things sweep over us like unexpected waves higher than our heads.  Our tendency is to allow the alarm buttons to go off, to begin a flurry of activity, to work harder.  Sometimes in our sense of alarm we go in fruitless and unhealthy directions.  We begin to blame someone.  We begin to be angry.  We often turn in every direction other than the one direction where true help always may be found!

What if we relaxed into the waves?  What if we gave up worries that the waves might go over our heads or wash us out to sea?  After all, the lifeguards on the beach always remind us that when the sea begins to take control and to wash us further out in the ocean what we need to do is to go with it!  Swimming against the current, flailing with all our might, and becoming frantic with fear seldom ever help.  But when we relax and go in the direction the current is trying to take us most often we will get deposited in a place of calm—a place that allows us to find our way back to shore! 

What if in all the anxieties of our lives—job stressors, money troubles, strife in our families, stress and strain in the life of our church—we simply learned to turn to God?  What if instead of pushing alarm buttons or working harder or blaming someone or becoming angry we simply gave ourselves—our lives, our families, our churches—over to the loving caress of God, a caress that enfolds us and buoys us like waves upon the ocean!