For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.
Jeremiah 29:11

It is a rare experience, I think, to be able to sit with someone while they pour out the ways they have seen the Sacred moving in their lives. If not rare, then it is certainly holy. And yet that is what I have been doing for the past three days. It is my yearly privilege to be a part of a gathering in which people are interviewed for ordination in the United Methodist Church. It is intense, beautiful work that spans over long hours of listening, praying, talking, worshiping, and then listening and praying some more. Through it all we try, in our feeble and imperfect ways, to practice the presence of God to one another.

Each time I do this I am struck with the power of our stories. Telling them. Listening to them. Be present to the stories of one another. Of course these stories I have been hearing have the added dimension of theology…..people reflecting on how they perceive God has been at work in their lives. Where they have seen the threads of holy movement. Where they have understood themselves as co-creators with the Creator. Where they have wrestled, been changed, found surprise, been enlivened and eventually found themselves in this place. Ready and willing to answer some still small voice or a loud clap of thunder that they understand as God’s voice calling them to a particular place.

Of course, this movement does not just happen with people who are moving into ordained ministry. It happens all the time, every day, in ordinary and extraordinary places. Most people don’t notice and certainly aren’t asked to write…..long, detailed papers…..about it. In classrooms and hospitals, around kitchen tables and along the factory line, people are making sense of their life’s story in the grand picture of who they are and the particular time and place in which they were born. Each of us feels some inward pull toward expression of some life’s work that says ‘I was here. I am a part of something larger.’

Being present to young adults as I am blessed to do, it is such a gift to observe them maneuvering the path of their life’s story. Most young adults I know are thoughtful, searching, trying to shape their own stamp on the world in responsible ways. They have watched a world struggle with too much stuff, known a lifetime of people standing at street corners with signs pleading for help, seen the rise and fall and rise again of economies that impacted their families and their futures.

And yet, they and those we have interviewed over the last days, haven chosen a path of hope. It has been my experience that all these people have decided to give every day to being ‘in’ the world in gentle yet powerful ways. Though some may not ‘theologize’ as I have been witness to, each is trying to find that sliver of space that can only be occupied by their gifts, their life. Holy work.

The thought of this makes me stop and think of all the people I pass every day on the street, on the freeway, in hallways, at tables in coffee shops. What is their story? How are they making meaning of the ‘voice’ they hear nudging them toward…..something? How will that ‘something’ bless the world?

My three days of being present to these candidates is nearly over. But the every day work of being present to all the life stories that come my way is always there. Ready to surprise. Ready to amaze. Ready to help me see the Sacred.

Holy people. Holy work.