In the Gentle Whisper

This has been a crazy week and I still look back and see that God has taught me a lot in this little time.

With school starting came drama... and lots of it. Now I'm not the kind of guy that drama happens to... but I am the kind of guy who loves to know about it. I totally forgot about my goal as a man and the fingerprint I want to leave on earth. I was pretty much happy to know the drama rather than remember the purpose God wanted for me. And then today I read an email about a man named Mr. Nelson and the Nelson family. One of the coolest families I will probably ever meet.

Mr. Nelson has stage 4 cancer and he found out that it had spread all over his body. Scary stuff... it's real life... it's real deadly... it scares me. At that moment I felt like I was going back through a nightmare.

I was there... standing in that dreaded hallway. Around me walked every other person in those scrubs and that smell of too many flowers... a hospital. I'm invisible... I feel alone... weak. Why the pain? Why the agony? I walk to school and who knows but me what is going on. My mom is on a hospital bed w/ cancer eating at her body.

I fast forward to the present and let the feeling sink in. This is what the Nelson's feel. This is what a divorced parent's child feels... this is pain. This is what I was called to support. To reach out to those in pain and truly live the epic life.

Heroes live epic lives... but how? Do they live it in selfishness? NO it's the opposite. A true epic life is a life that is given up. To remember that there is a world of hurt out there and I should be using my time and energy. I was called to the epic life....

That time in my life when my mom was sick was my desert. Today in Bible I studied Elijah when he ran from Abijah. He ran to the desert... felt alone... felt let-down... felt pain. And there in that desert God spoke to him. Not in a gigantic way, but a whisper... why? Because it is in the desert that we listen... and that whisper makes a memory... an assurance of the call to an epic life. Elijah lived it... he went through the desert... and he committed himself to an epic life. May I remember God's gentle whispers... for I need that more than the latest high school drama.

The LORD said, "Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the LORD, for the LORD is about to pass by." Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake. 12 After the earthquake came a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. 13 When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave. Then a voice said to him, "What are you doing here, Elijah?" 1 Kings 18

What was he doing there... He was listening to a whisper... a whisper of his calling... an epic calling.