When did you experience a day when nothing would be the same again? One of those milestone moments in your life. A thing that you can point to as something that definitively altered things for you, your experience, and your routine. Maybe you thinking back to the first day of school or graduation days. When you started your first job. Moved to a new town. As ordinary, routine as life can be, where days, weeks, months, and years can fly by that seem lost in our memories – there are those days that forever stand out in our hearts and minds, the days when everything changed: the day you met your future spouse, a wedding day, the day you had a child – my ordination day.
Today, a patient shared that he was celebrating his third month anniversary of sobriety. a life-changing day for him. Well, truth be told, that he has been marking every single day since his quit day back in November that started on his birthday. The day when he became sober.
I am – so proud of him. It is an incredibly courageous thing and sadly is something that’s more counter-cultural than ever to commit to sobriety. 25 years ago there was a greater push for people to wake up to the harmful effects of alcohol – now we have so-called government leaders gleefully legalizing even more dangerous substances like marijuana… That helps contribute to all kinds of influences that enable and encourage reckless behavior and is causing higher rates of addiction, to the point that some can’t even imagine going sober for a week. But this man and countless others bear witness to the possibility of breaking these addictive cycles, the positive shifts and transformations of life it has brought to them that they can all trace to a particular day when their lives changed.
Every year we hear from one of the Gospel writers about how Jesus called his first disciples. More than likely these men had some encounters and heard Jesus preach a few times before this incident. Yet there’s something definitive about this particular day where He calls them. Jesus had just preached saying “Repent, the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” And then somewhat simply says a few words that invite them to follow Him – and they drop everything and do just that.
This becomes a day where they left behind their livelihoods – leaving their nets. A day where their lives were completely re-ordered and re-prioritized – leaving their families. They could have had no idea what each day that followed would look like, the challenges, the trials, and how radical this decisive moment would be. But they heard His voice, saw His face, and knew they didn’t want to let this opportunity pass them by and become a day they regretted.
How we can, like the disciples, accept the invitation to follow Jesus. Follow Him by committing to prayer. Follow Him through my selflessness and sacrificial offerings to others, especially those in need. Follow Him by letting go of the anger, and the pain and offering forgiveness. Follow Him, striving to do all those things, knowing that they’re hard, knowing we’re not perfect but that He keeps calling and inviting us to get up, to keep pursuing and striving and trying. And finding in the process, when we do, that no day will ever be the same.
Lord, I pray for all my Sonshine Friends that we accept His invitation to be his disciples. Give us the grace and strength to keep pursuing, to keep striving, to keep trying to be the best disciple that He knows we can be.
