Rev. Michael D. Jacobs
Jeremiah 1: 4 – 8

You Called Me in My Mother’s Womb

You Called Me in My Mother’s Womb
Day 41: Counting down to our Jubilee! 

In 1973, while away at college, my friend Mike wrote me about being involved in the youth fellowship at his church, Trinity United Church of Christ. It was surprising, yet inspiring, that he was involved in something like that. He was also a part of a choir called the Trinity Choral Ensemble. Mike had sung in high school in the male chorus so it was not so surprising that he would continue singing somewhere else. Well when I came home that summer, I met some of the people that he hung out with that were in youth fellowship and the choir with him. They were doing a play called “The Return of Ham.”

I saw the play several times during the summer and when I returned to college that fall Mike, via his letters, continued to keep me abreast of what was going on with the folks in youth fellowship and the choir. I came home for good that following summer and began to hang out with the choir members and eventually joined the church and the Trinity Choral Ensemble. That experience was pivotal in my life; so much so that in 1976, Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr. and I had a conversation after service one Sunday and I told him that I was not sure what I wanted to do with my life. He said, “Have you considered going into ministry?” I looked at him with shock and about a week later gave him a nonchalant negative response. I ran from the question and I eventually ran from the church but the call of God on my life never stopped waiting for me to stop running.

The stories of Jeremiah’s call and mine have some similarities because my response was similar. “Me, become a minister?” “Not me, I am just a young man, trying to have a good time.” “I wouldn’t begin to know how to handle that.” After running for 19 years, I entered seminary in 1995. God’s servant, our beloved Pastor Emeritus Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr., saw something in me that I did not see in myself and was the first person used by God to inform me of what God had designed for me to do. Little had I realized that, like Jeremiah, I had been set apart in my mother’s womb.

Prayer 

God I have been running from serving you because of my fear. Help me to overcome my fears and doubts, so that I may serve you with gladness. Help me, dear God, to be what you have created me to be.

Thought for the day 

When you look at yourself, do you see what God sees or do you see something else?