Start Something
I am working these days on the song that will be the theme song for a series
of youth retreats to be held over the next couple of years. Eden Theological
Seminary (a seminary of the United Church of Christ) has been given a grant
for youth leadership development, and as a part of this grant thirty youth retreats
are being planned all across the United Church of Christ. The theme for the
retreats is "Start Something . . .God's Calling".
In preparation for composing this song I have been reviewing stories, both
Biblical and otherwise, of people who saw an injustice or saw a need or heard
a call and rose to answer.
Moses, the old man taking care of sheep, who heard the call to lead the people
out across the deep, Samuel, the young man who stayed awake at night, who heard
the call to be the prophet and stand up for the right. The list continues with
Abraham and Sarah, Queen Esther, young Mary, mother of Jesus, Saul the Christian-killer,
Zaccheus the rich crook, and in our own time, Martin King, Theresa of Calcutta
and my mother. She led no movement, had no famous words to say, but heard the
call to raise her children to give their lives away. And my Rachel, who often
drove her family up the wall when she brought in troubled street kids with no
place to turn at all.
"Start something", says the song's chorus, "God's calling; now I'm rising
to the task, now I'm falling; now I'm certain, now I wonder; now I'm walking
on the water, now I'm going under; the truth is I'm not ready, the truth is
I'm too young; sometimes the ones who are not ready are the ones who get it
done."
If you are doing the good and daring to challenge the status quo, you will
so often find yourself wondering, "Why? Why me? Why now?" And you will have
decided to quit a thousand times. On the other hand, if you hear a call and
do not answer, I fear you will turn out like the man to whom I spoke last year
after a concert. He said to me with a wistful expression, "I wanted to be a
missionary once, but I put it off. I wanted to work in prisons once, but I put
it off. I wanted to find a way to help homeless kids in the city, but I put
it off. Now I'm seventy years old, and I don't know if I have the energy to
do much at all."
Start something.
THE CALL By Ken Medema
Can you hear it down the ages like a mighty trumpet sound,
A call to leave the night and step into the morning?
It's a call to joy and gladness in a world of war and pain,
And yet it sounds a note of danger and of warning.
It's a call to leave your treasures and your trinkets on the road,
A call to join the weeping, and to bear the sufferer's load.
It's a call to live like fools by another set of rules,
Well, it's a call to take your cross in hand and follow,
Yes, it's a call to take your cross in hand and follow.
It's a call to love the stranger, it's a call to live as friends,
In a world that says good fences make good neighbors;
It's a call to face the makers of destruction and of war
And to plead that we put down those guns and sabers.
It's a call to death and dying, it's a call to life and birth,
And it's a call to plant the seeds of love on barren planet Earth.
It's a call to live like fools by another set of rules,
But it's a call to take your cross in hand and follow,
Yes, it's a call to take your cross in hand and follow.
It's a bloodstained invitation to a life of sacrifice,
A call to walk the road that leads from here to glory.
It's a joyful expectation of the dawning of that day
When God shall write the final chapter of the story.
It's a call to be the lowly, and it's a call to be the least,
It's a call to join the fasting that shall lead to final feast.
It's a call to live like fools by another set of rules,
But it's a call to take your cross in hand and follow.
But it's a call to take your cross in hand and follow.
I hear that music, and it's calling me,
Come and be all that you were born to be,
If anybody would come after me,
Take up your cross and follow.
Take up your cross and follow!
KPM/July 2001
