Monday Musing: Martin and the call

I didn't get to this post in time for it to be a Monday morning musing; the day got away from me in very ordinary ways. We are between weather events in the South Sound - very cold and a scootch of snow over the weekend and additional snow expected tomorrow. Today was a slow morning of chores and undoing the final vestiges of Christmas that remain in our home. This afternoon we took a ride out to a farm where parishioners I've not yet met own a cider mill. I look forward to going back this fall. Today we bought a pie.

Yesterday in the sermon, I included a letter written by MLK, Jr. containing his call story. I am reminded that we are all called and that even the most remarkable ministries sometimes begin in very ordinary ways. Here's the excerpt from the sermon:

In July of 1959, Joan Thatcher, the publicity director of the American Baptist Convention, asked Dr. King to compose a statement outlining his call story.  In her request she noted “Apparently many of our young people still feel that unless they see a burning bush or a blinding light on the road to Damascus, they haven’t been called”.

         In August of that year, Dr. King responded to her request with his own call story:

My call to the ministry was neither dramatic nor spectacular. It came neither by some miraculous vision nor by some blinding light experience on the road of life. Moreover, it did not come as a sudden realization. Rather, it was a response to an inner urge that gradually came upon me. This urge expressed itself in a desire to serve God and humanity, and the feeling that my talent and my commitment could best be expressed through the ministry. At first I planned to be a physician; then I turned my attention in the direction of law. But as I passed through the preparation stages of these two professions, I still felt within that undying urge to serve God and humanity through the ministry. During my senior year in college, I finally decided to accept the challenge to enter the ministry. I came to see that God had placed a responsibility upon my shoulders and the more I tried to escape it the more frustrated I would become. A few months after preaching my first sermon I entered theological seminary. This, in brief, is an account of my call and pilgrimage to the ministry.[1]

[1] https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/my-call-ministry