THE QUOTES PAGE

selections of poetry and prose and excerpts from sermons on the theme of vocation

From Contemporary Prayers, Ed. Caryl Micklem

Don’t wait for an angel, don’t look for a star,
to tell you the message or guide you from far.
They’re part of the background for art-lovers’ eyes,
to help them to measure the portrait for size.
            He’s only a baby to grow to a man:
            to call you to finish the work he began.

From Living at the Edge: Sacrament and Solidarity in Leadership by Penny Jamieson

When I reflect on what I do [as a bishop] – using the opportunities that my experience as a woman offers me – it seems to me that I am seeking to make space, ‘wombspace’ if you like, where others can grow and experience the life-giving power of the Spirit….For ‘wombspace’ is like ‘sheepfold’; both are images of both enclosure and room for growth.  An ancient image of episcopacy is reborn.

From The Gospel of the Heart by Flor McCarthy

When Jesus eventually called [the apostles] to permanent discipleship, he said, ‘Follow me and I will make you fishers of people’ (Mark 1:18).  From this they understood that his call was a call to service of others.  The leaders of cults call people to follow them, and then turn them into their personal slaves.  Jesus called the apostles, not to the service of himself, but to the service of others.
            The apostles also knew that he wasn’t calling them to a life of ease.  Quite the contrary.  But as fishermen they would have been well acquainted with hardship already.  They were not afraid of sacrifice.
            They realised that his call also held great possibilities for themselves.  It provided them with an opportunity to live deeper and more worthwhile lives.  Fishing was an important occupation.  But Jesus called them to a more important occupation.  He offered them not just a new work, but a cause to which to dedicate their lives.
            …vocation involves vision, motivation, and dedication.  There is a tendency to regard the apostles as supermen.  They were not supermen.  They were just ordinary people.  No one ever believed in the ordinary people as much as Jesus did.

From Scripture in Church, commentary by Conor O’Riordan, OP

God has given us the gift of adoption.  He has also given us the gift of Jesus, our Good Shepherd.  The family of God is not just a mass of humanity.  It is composed of persons.  In today’s gospel Jesus tells us that he cares for people.  Cares for them so much that he voluntarily gave up his life out of love for his Father and for individual men and women.  He also displays his goodness by inviting by name each member of his flock to listen to his voice and to enter into a life of loving intimacy with him.  If we heed his call, Jesus, the Good Shepherd, will lead us to the Lord’s own house where we shall see the Father as he really is.

From The Confession of St. Patrick, translated by John Skinner

Now on this account, be amazed ‘all who fear God, both great and small’, and, even you masters in the art of rhetoric, listen and take careful note, who stirred up me, a fool, from the midst of those who are considered wise and learned in the practice of law, as well as ‘persuasive in their speech’ and in every other way and, ahead of these others, inspired me who is so despised by the world, to be fit to help (if only I could!) faithfully and ‘in fear and trembling’ and without any complaint that race of people to which the love of Christ drew me and thus spend the rest of my life, if only I might prove worthy; simply to serve them in humility and truth.

From R.S. Thomas Collected Poems 1945-1990 London: Phoenix, 1993

The Country Clergy

I see them working in old rectories
By the sun’s light, by candlelight,
Venerable men, their black cloth
A little dusty, a little green
With holy mildew. And yet their skulls,
Ripening over so many prayers,
Toppled into the same grave
With oafs and yokels. They left no books,
Memorial to their lonely thought
In grey parishes; rather they wrote
On men’s hearts and in the minds
Of young children sublime words
Too soon forgotten. God in his time
Our out of time will correct this.

In Church

Often I try
To analyse the quality
Of its silences. Is this where God hides
From my searching? I have stopped to listen,
After the few people have gone,
To the air recomposing itself
For vigil. It has waited like this
Since the stones grouped themselves about it.
These are the hard ribs
Of a body that our prayers have failed
To animate. Shadows advance
From their corners to take possession
Of places the light held
For an hour. The bats resume
Their business. The uneasiness of the pews
Ceases. There is no other sound
In the darkness but the sound of a man
Breathing, testing his faith
On emptiness, nailing his questions
One by one to an untenanted cross.

The Priest

The priest picks his way
Through the parish. Eyes watch him
From windows, from the farms;
Hearts wanting him to come near.
The flesh rejects him.
Women, pouring from the black kettle,
Stir up the whirling tea-grounds
Of their thoughts; offer him a dark
Filling in their smiling sandwich.
Priests have a long way to go.
The people wait for him to come
To them over the broken glass
Of their vows, making them pay
With their sweat’s coinage for their correction.
He goes up a green lane
Through growing birches; lambs cushion
His vision. He comes slowly down
In the dark, feeling the cross warp
In his hands; hanging on it his thought’s icicles.
‘Crippled soul,’ do you say? looking at him
From the mind’s height’ ‘limping through life
On his prayers. There are other people
In the world, sitting at table
Contented, though the broken body
And the shed blood are not on the menu.’
‘Let it be so,’ I say. ‘Amen and amen.’

Kneeling

Moments of great calm,
Kneeling before an altar
Of wood in a stone church
In summer, waiting for the God
To speak; the air a staircase

Waiting

Here are mountains to ascend
not to preach from,
not to summon one’s disciples
to, but to see far off the dream that is life:
winged yachts hovering over
a gentian sea; sun-making
windscreens; the human torrent
irrigating tunefully the waste places.

Ah, Jerusalem, Jerusalem!
Is it for nothing our chapels were christened
with Hebrew names? The Book rusts

in the empty pulpits above
empty pews, but the Word ticks inside
remorselessly as the bomb that is timed soon to go off.
For silence; the sun’s light

Ringing me, as though I acted
A great rôle. And the audiences
Still; all that close throng
Of spirits waiting, as I,

For the message.
Prompt me, God;
But not yet. When I spake,
Though it be you who speak
Through me, something is lost.
The meaning is in the waiting.

From George Herbert The Complete English Poems London: Penguin, 1991

The Collar

I struck the board, and cried, No more,
I will abroad.
What? shall I ever sigh and pine?
My lines and life are free; free as the road,
Loose as the wind, as large as store.
Shall I be still in suit?
Have I no harvest but a thorn
To let me blood, and not restore
What I have lost with cordial fruit?

Sure, there was wine
Before my sighs did dry it: there was corn
Before my tears did drown it.

Is the year only lost to me?
Have I no bays to crown it?
No flowers, no garlands gay? All blasted?
All wasted?
Not so, my heart: but there is fruit,
And thou hast hands.
Recover all thy sigh-blown age
On double pleasures: leave thy cold dispute
Of what is fit, and not. Forsake thy cage,
 Thy rope of sands,
Which petty thoughts have made, and made to thee
Good cable, to enforce and draw,
And be thy law,
While thou didst wink and wouldst not see.
Away; take heed:
I will abroad.
Call in thy death’s head there: tie up thy fears.
He that forbears
To suit and serve his need,
Deserves his load.
But as I raved and grew more fierce and wild
At every word,
Me thoughts I heard one calling, Child:
And I replied, My Lord.

The Priesthood

Blest Order, which in power dost so excel
T hat with th’one hand thou liftest to the sky,
And with the other throwest down to hell
In thy just censures; fain would I draw nigh,
Fain put thee on, exchanging my lay-sword
                          For that of th’holy Word.

But thou are fire, sacred and hallowed fire;
And I but earth and clay: should I presume
To wear thy habit, the severe attire
My slender compositions might consume.
I am both foul and brittle; much unfit
                           To deal in holy Writ.

Yet have I often seen, by cunning hand
And force of fire, what curious things are made
Of wretched earth. Where once I scorned to satnd,
That earth is fitted by the fire and trade
Of skilful artists, for the boards of those
                           Who make the bravest shows.

But since those great ones, be they ne’er so great,
Come from the earth, from whence those vessels come;
So that at once both feeder, dish, and meat
Have one beginning and one final sum:
I do not greatly wonder at the sight
                             If earth in earth delight.

But th’holy men of God such vessels are,
As serve him up, who all the world commands:
When God vouchsafeth to become our fare,
Their hands convey him, who conveys their hands.
O what pure things, most pure must those things be,
                            Who bring my God to me!

Wherefore I dare not, I put forth my hand
To hold the Ark, although it seemed to shake
Through th’old sins and new doctrines of our land.
Only, since God doth often vessels make
Of lowly matter for high uses meet,
                            I throw me at his feet.

There will I lie, until my Maker seek
For some mean stuff whereon to show his skill:
Then is my time. The distance of the meek
Doth flatter power. Lest good come short of ill
In praising might, the poor do by submission


From Rose Macaulay The Towers of Trebizond [first published 1956] London: Flamingo, 1995. Chapter 7.

(This novel is narrated by the niece of a very High Church widow with a missionary zeal to evangelise the Turks, liberate the women, and turn and there is great depth underpinning the apparently artless style of the narrator. She herself is in a crisis of faith, closely linked to an ongoing affair with a married man. While Father Chantry-Pigg is in most respects not a model of ministry to be closely emulated, sometimes his perceptions are accurate. One Sunday morning, he celebrates the Eucharist on the deck of their ship as they are approaching Trebizond. Afterwards, he finds Laurie alone and forces her to confront the seriousness of the dilemma in which she is caught.)

‘Later in the morning, when I was on deck looking through glasses at the first sight of Trebizond, Father Chantry-Pigg came and stood by me and said, “How much longer are you going on like this, shutting the door against God?”

This question always disturbed me; I sometimes asked it of myself, but I did not know the answer. Perhaps it would have to be for always, because I was so deeply committed to something else that I could not break away.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“It’s your business to know. There is no question. You must decide at once. Do you mean to drag on for years more in deliberate sin, refusing grace, denying the Holy Spirit? And when it ends, what then? It will end; such things always end. What then? Shall you come back, when it is taken out of your hands and it will cost you nothing? When you will have nothing to offer to God but a burnt out fire and a fag end? Oh, he’ll take it, he’ll take anything we offer. It is you who will be impoverished for ever by so poor a gift. Offer now what will cost you a great deal, and you’ll be enriched beyond anything you can imagine. How do you know how much of life you still have? It may be many years, it may be a few weeks. You may leave this world without grace, go on into the next stage in the chains you won’t break now. Do you ever think of that, or have you put yourself beyond caring?

Not quite, never quite. I had tried, but never quite. From time to time I knew what I had lost. But nearly all the time, God was a bad second, enough to hurt but not to cure, to hide from but not to seek, and I knew that when I died I should hear him saying, “Go away, I never knew you,” and that would be the end of it all, the end of everything, and after that I never should know him, though then to know him would be what I should want more than anything, and not to know him would be hell. I sometimes felt this even now, but not often enough to do what would break my life to bits. Now I was vexed that Father Chantry-Pigg had brought it up and flung me into this turmoil. Hearing Mass was bad enough, hearing it and not taking part in it, seeing it and not approaching it, being offered it and shutting the door on it, and in England I seldom went.

I couldn’t answer Father Chantry-Pigg, there was nothing I could say except “I don’t know”. He looked at me sternly and said, “I hope, I pray, that you will know before it is too late. The door won’t be open for ever. Refuse it long enough, and you will become incapable of going through it. You will, little by little, stop believing. Even God can’t force the soul grown blind and deaf and paralysed to see and hear and move. I beg you, in this Whitsuntide, to obey the Holy Spirit of God. That is all I have to say.’

A poem by Edwina Gately

You are called to become
A perfect creation.
No one is called to become
Who you are called to be
It does not matter
How short or tall
Or thick-set or slow
You may be.
It does not matter
Whether you sparkle with life
Or are silent as a still pool,
Whether you sing your song aloud
Or weep alone in darkness.
It does not matter
Whether you feel loved and admired
Or unloved and alone
or you are called to become
A perfect creation.
No one’s shadow
Should cloud your becoming,
No one’s light
Should dispel your spark.
For the Lord delights in you,
Jealously looks upon you
And encourages with gentle joy
Every movement of the Spirit
Within you.
Unique and loved you stand,
Beautiful or stunted in your growth
But never without hope and life.
For you are called to become a perfect creation.
This becoming may be
Gentle or harsh,
Subtle or violent,
But it never ceases,
Never pauses or hesitates,
Only is –
Creative force –
Calling you
Calling you to become
A perfect Creation.

* * *

From Rowan Williams, Open to Judgement p.174

If we take seriously the idea that God is faithful and doesn’t change, we need to think of him speaking over and over again the same word to us – our true name, our real identity – and making us be, over and over again…. In other words, vocation doesn’t just happen, once and for all, at a fixed date….. It happens from birth to death; and what we usually call vocation is only a name for the moment of crisis within the unbroken process.

From ‘Disciples and other Strangers’ by Edward J Farrell

Becoming a vowed disciple is the work of a lifetime, a work of many people, a work of intimate love. The realisation that the Father reaches out to men and women and calls them, loves them so much that they can choose no other is an awesome experience. One almost feels compelled to whisper. He chooses the likes of us, drawing us to himself that we might light up the whole city.

For the Lord to make himself known is a long and slow process. He whispers gently into the hearts of those who are open to him a call that is humanly impossible, absurd, unbearable, yet mysteriously a call which is heard.

To vow is to follow and live the incredible risk of his abandonment into our hands so many centuries ago. He has not spoken a word since; he has not done another action. In his incredible abandonment and love he depends upon our capacity to love, our capacity to be faithful no matter what the cost, what the suffering. Only in his vow to us can we vow to him; in his fidelity is our faithfulness.

* * *

From Hoob Oosterhuis, Open Your Hearts

You have called us
from far and near.
You have made us –
great and small,
each one of us different
in heart and face,
but all of us your people.
We ask you then,
make new people of us
who hear your voice
with living hearts.

Do this today
and never take your hands
away from us.
Amen.

* * *

From the Anima Christi

…Keep calling to me until that day comes
When with your saints I may praise you forever.

John Powell, Through Seasons of the Heart (Collins 1988)

There is an old Christian tradition
that God sends each person into this world
With a special message to deliver,
With a special song to sing for others,
With a special act of love to bestow.
No one else can speak my message,
Or sing my song,
Or offer my act of love.
These are entrusted only to me.

Testimonies from ‘real people’

“I believe that my life has been shaped into a bowl and that all these wonderful opportunities that have come my way are gifts from God, to grow and ripen, like pieces of fruit.  As I continue on my fruitful journey I know that I am growing into the person that God wants me to be.”   (Candidate for Authorised Lay Ministry)

“I love food. I’ve always loved food, and being on Masterchef is giving me a unique opportunity to bring all my enthusiasm, passion, and creativity together.  If I win I will want to share my passion with as many people as possible by opening my own restaurant”    (Contestant on BBC2’s Masterchef)

“Since I started thinking about ministry, I’ve felt more and more fully myself’, more and more alive.  Despite the struggles that working full time in ministry brings, I have never felt more fulfilled than I do now.”   (Parish Priest)

“From a position of gratitude for what Jesus had done for me (and you), I wanted to make sure that I was doing what he wanted me to do with my life.  So I asked him.”   (an ordinand)

“I didn’t hear any words, but it was as if God spoke directly into my heart.” (a first experience of God’s call)

The call seemed to come out of the blue, and turned my whole world upside down.  But eventually I began to question whether it had even been the right way up in the first place… (a monk)

“Isn’t it true, though, that God only needs to really shout (e.g. by appearing in a burning bush or by sending thunderbolts) when people aren’t listening properly in the first place?”   (a teenager)

Vocation

by Rowan Williams

In the most general sense, vocation is God’s summons into existence itself. God calls creation into being; every thing that is made is called and named; its identity lies in the purposive call of God. But for the Christian, this is more specific again: human beings are called to grow in community into the

likeness of Jesus Christ. Their vocation is not just to exist, but to come into a life that shares in Christ’s life. The Church’s very name (ekklesia) means ‘a community that is called together’; but the Church is not only a called community, it is a community that represents God’s call and invitation to all humanity.

So specific ‘vocations’ within the Church need to be seen as ways of representing and reinforcing this basic invitation from God; vocation in the Church reminds the world that it is called into being and invited into new being. Particular styles of life and ministry in the Church are different ways of echoing God’s call.

In this light, we need to be careful about separating person from function.

Only when I am conscious of being called by God to be myself in Christ can I find what specific work he asks of me in passing on that discovery and that hope to others. If we bear the call of God to others, that will itself be a way of becoming more profoundly who we are and who we are meant to be.

It is possible to see the whole of the educational process as a story of vocation, to the extent that it is about inviting people to become what they can be. Christian education will be particularly attentive to this, always asking what it is that this or that person can show us of God’s love and Christ’s renewing power.

So, as with vocation in general, the process of education needs people who have some sense of being called and ‘invited’ themselves. It has long been recognized that the best teachers tend to be those who don’t separate person and function, who find that encouraging others to respond to their fullest

potential is what makes them themselves. This is an aspect of teaching very much obscured by all the trends in our society to regard teaching as simple communication of skills or information (not to mention the idea of replacing teachers by computers for certain purposes). Any Christian educational

process ought to be fully conscious of this dimension, however, and should give priority in its vision to a very clear acknowledgement of the teacher’s work as the way a teacher responds to God’s call to become herself or himself in helping others to become themselves.

There are obvious implications for all teacher training, but especially Christian training. One of the areas for Church colleges to take on board is this question of personal nurture and development in ‘becoming oneself in Christ’. Chaplaincy in such an institution is not just liturgical or even pastoral; it needs to have some aspects of real spiritual stretching about it, what in ordination training would be called ‘formation’. Likewise, professional development for the Christian teacher is something that must involve attention to the teacher’s calling as disciple, as someone called to call others and open doors for their spiritual growth.

This task is not just for other educational professionals. Pastors and local church communities need to be involved in supporting and stretching the calling of the teachers in their schools and in their congregations. Teachers working in non-Church schools are likely to need as much or even more in

the way of nurture, to sustain their awareness of their work as a calling. In a school community, much depends in all this upon the skills of a headteacher.  In the Church school, it is absolutely essential that a head should understand this vocational dimension to the staff’s work (even in the case of those staff who have little or no overt religious commitment, but are willing to work for the school’s ethos). The head needs to see that these issues of ‘formation’ and support for a vision that does not separate

function and person are addressed in professional development programmes and so on. And if s/he is to do this effectively, s/he will need resourcing in turn. Christian heads require professional training that will keep before them the job of undergirding the vocational side of all the work of a

school – as well as, once again, serious and sympathetic help from local congregations, and understanding from Foundation governors who can be relied on to support the vision.

In brief, a head who is conscious of this vision, and above all a head in a Church school, will be someone who is capable of resisting some of the pressures towards functionalism, crudely measurable outcomes and the depersonalizing of the teaching relationship that are around in the educational establishment.

From David Edwards ‘A Priest’s Vocation’ in Tradition and Unity: Sermons Published in Honour of Robert Runcie ed. Dan Cohn-Sherbok London: Bellew, 1991. pp. 110-114:

“The sense of vocation which a person has when he or she says in the heart, ‘I want to be a priest’, belongs not merely to young ambition of the flicker of idealism which we retain in middle age; it belongs to a realm which ultimately defies psychological analysis, because this sense of vocation is put into the heart by God. The boy says, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant hears.’ The man says, ‘I will follow you.’ The woman says, ‘I will listen and I will serve.’ That boy may grow up to be involved in many problems and tragedies; he may grow up to do and to be far less than he wanted – but the Lord did speak, he is still the Lord’s servant; that, he increasingly knows for sure. And because he knows that this call was from God, increasingly he knows that its origin in God matters far more than his response or his failure. God spoke, to that he can hold. When we are young, we are likely to make a great fuss about choosing God – but more and more as the years pass we know that what is important is that God chose us. When we are young, we are likely to be bothered greatly about whether or not we can know that God is real – but more and more as the years pass we now that what is important is that God knows us. ‘He knew me from the womb, He called me before I was conceived’; that was the conviction of the Old Testament prophet, Jeremiah, and it becomes the conviction of every disciple and every minister who has heard of the call of God through Christ. And what a consolation that is! The call and the gift of God are not revoked, for God calls from His eternal love and He gives from His Creator’s store. ‘Through all the changing scenes of life’ that call from God, that gift by God of a sense of vocation, can be kept and understood in an ever-increasing depth of wonder and adoration. To think that He chose me when I was so immature! To think that He has gone on choosing me when I have failed Him so often! To think that He chooses me for ever although the emotion of being chosen has grown dim! Yes, we marvel at this fact which has come into our little lives. But it is a fact, it is the most significant fact about our lives, and it is the fact that creates ‘me’. Each one of us is many persons but here is the most real ‘me’.”

“A person who hears the call of God to become a servant of God will achieve much and will be richly rewarded. In addition to many of the delights which other men and women know, there will be the special privilege of finding love within the Church as a new family . . . . Greater even than this reward of finding that the Church is a new family is another reward. When our Christian friends love us, we learn that God loves us. The love which we receive from the brethren, wrote St John in one of his letters, shows that we have passed out of death into life. Why? Because that love is so strong because its strength comes from the eternal reality of God’s love. Whatever else the future holds, it will hold the greater unfolding, the fuller Advent, of that love. It will bring Christ, the living Christ, and we shall live because he lives, because his life is the life of God. What is the difficulty of life, what is the darkness of death, when this call never ceases to sound in our ears?”

“I hope I have not left the impression that the only thing that matters is a vocation to the full-time ministry. No, full-time ministry is there to be a sign to all Christians about their own callings. Every Christian receives this vocation to be a disciple. . . . Christ calls people who are full of doubts, full of self-criticism and self-condemnation. It is as you respond to the call that you learn more and become more.”

From New Sunday and Holy Day Liturgies by Flor McCarthy

It has been said that the first of our problems is to find the work we are meant to do in this world.  Vincent van Gogh spent many years trying to find out what he wanted to do with his life.  Finally, after much searching, he discovered that he wanted to be a painter.  From that day on his life changed.  It wasn’t that it suddenly became easier.  The opposite would be nearer the truth.  It was just that, whereas up to this his life was going nowhere, now it was going somewhere definite.  He said:

‘I often feel that I am as rich as Croesus, not in money, however.  I am rich because I have found in my work something to which I can devote myself heart and soul, and which gives meaning and inspiration to my life.  I think it is a very great blessing when people find their work.  If at times I feel rising within me the desire for a life of ease, I go back fondly to a life of hardship.  This is not the road on which one perishes.  Rather, this is a powerful stream that will bear me safely to port.’

What’s the difference between the good shepherd and the hireling?  It is the contrasting attitudes they bring to the work of shepherding.  The hireling does it because he has to.  For him it’s just a job; his heart is not in it.  The good shepherd does it because he wants to.  His heart is in it.

…Happy those who have found their work, no matter how humble that work is.  They are saved from half-heartedness, and from the tragedy of only half-living their lives.

From New Sunday and Holy Day Liturgies by Flor McCarthy

            To have a work which absorbs one gives a person tremendous strength and energy.  Alexander Solzhenitsyn spent several years in a Siberian labour camp.  The thing that most helped him to survive was his writing.  In his monumental work, “The Gulag Archipelago”, he says,

            ‘Sometimes in a sullen work party with machine-gunners barking around me, lines and images crowded in so urgently that I felt myself borne through the air, overleaping the column in my hurry to reach the work compound and find a corner to write.  At such moments I was both free and happy.

            I went on writing.  In winter in the warming-up shack, in spring and summer on the scaffolding at the building site; in the interval between two barrowloads of mortar I would put my bit of paper on the bricks and write down with a pencil stub the verses which had rushed into my head while I was slapping on the last hodful.  I was searched, and counted, and herded over the steppe.  I sat in the mess hall over the ritual gruel sometimes not even noticing its taste, deaf to those around me - feeling my way about my verses and trimming them to fit like bricks in a wall.’

            To have a work which absorbs one is a great blessing.  But to have a sense of vocation is an even greater blessing.  In fact, it is one of the greatest blessings in life.  Jesus had it to a degree we will never equal.  On one occasion he said to his apostles, ‘I have a food of which you know nothing.  My food is to do the will of the one who sent me, and to complete his work.’ (John 4:33-34)  And we see it even more clearly in today’s Gospel where he talks about himself as the good shepherd.

From Sermon Hooks by Nick Fawcett

What would we give to have the faith of Moses or Samuel, Elijah or Isaiah?  How much easier it would be to serve God then.  How much clearer our path would be.  Have you ever felt like that?  If so, think again, for when you read the biblical accounts of God calling people to service, almost always the initial response is the same: not delight but dismay, not pleasure but panic, not thanksgiving but fear.  Look closer, and it’s hardly surprising, for (…) the things God called these people to do were onerous to say the least, nine times out of ten guaranteeing a less than enthusiastic reception.  Few if any of those called considered themselves suited for the job, and most would have ducked it given the chance.  Yet God was to equip each one to meet the task set before them.

We too may find ourselves facing challenges we believe beyond us, God’s call a disturbing experience rather than the joy-ride we might have hoped for.  But, if we are ready to respond, then we, like those before us, will discover that when God asks us to do something, he gives us the resources we need to finish the job.