All Have Been Called But Who will Answer?

I Yam What I Yam.

We take our own spiritual consecration and try to make it into a call of G-d, but when we get right with Him He brushes all this aside. Then He gives us a tremendous, riveting pain to fasten our attention on something that we never even dreamed could be His call for us. And for one radiant, flashing moment we see His purpose, and we say, "Here am I! Send me" ( Isaiah 6:8 ).

This call has nothing to do with personal sanctification, but with being made broken bread and poured-out wine. Yet G-d can never make us into wine if we object to the fingers He chooses to use to crush us. We say, "If G-d would only use His own fingers, and make me broken bread and poured-out wine in a special way, then I wouldn’t object!" But when He uses someone we dislike, or some set of circumstances to which we said we would never submit, to crush us, then we object. Yet we must never try to choose the place of our own martyrdom. If we are ever going to be made into wine, we will have to be crushed— you cannot drink grapes. Grapes become wine only when they have been squeezed.

I wonder what finger and thumb G-d has been using to squeeze you? Have you been as hard as a marble and escaped? If you are not ripe yet, and if G-d had squeezed you anyway, the wine produced would have been remarkably bitter. To be a holy person means that the elements of our natural life experience the very presence of G-d as they are providentially broken in His service. We have to be placed into G-d and brought into agreement with Him before we can be broken bread in His hands. Stay right with G-d and let Him do as He likes, and you will find that He is producing the kind of bread and wine that will not only provide spiritual food for the Haskalah; but will also be a light unto His other children.