Lord we have several openings and several applicants. I struggle to be fair and accurate. Keep me alert to the competencies that are required to do an excellent job. Keep me alert to prejudice as when someone says, “I don’t think they’ll fit here.” Let me successfully bring them back to the competencies required and the competencies displayed. May I help applicants be enough at ease to let their ability be identified. Help me leave behind stereotypes of age, gender, ethnicity and social class. I believe, with your help and good processes, that we can be fair and equitable while finding the best person for our organization. But it is not that easy.
It is interesting that you “hired” inexperienced people to be your disciples and apostles. They were certainly diverse. Wealthy women, tax collectors, lower class fishermen. You chose them for their underlying characteristics not their knowledge of the Torah, the Law or politics. You chose St. Paul; someone who was persecuting your followers, who unlike the other Apostles knew the Torah, the Law and politics. So he was an outlier in a way different than the others. What did he do? He opened the door to the Gentiles. Give us wisdom to see the underlying characteristics and not just the experience or status. May we be as successful as you at growing our community.
God of the Living, why did you choose Abraham to establish a people?
Section 2, Scripture: Genesis12:1-8; MT 4:18-22
| Hebrew Scripture | New Testament |
| Abram’s Call and Migration.
1 The LORD said to Abram: Go forth from your land, your relatives, and from your father’s house to a land that I will show you. 2 I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you. All the families of the earth will find blessing in you. 4 Abram went as the LORD directed him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he left Haran.5 Abram took his wife Sarai, his brother’s son Lot, all the possessions that they had accumulated, and the persons they had acquired in Haran, and they set out for the land of Canaan. When they came to the land of Canaan,6 Abram passed through the land as far as the sacred place at Shechem, by the oak of Moreh. The Canaanites were then in the land. 7 The LORD appeared to Abram and said: To your descendants I will give this land. So Abram built an altar there to the LORD who had appeared to him. 8 From there he moved on to the hill country east of Bethel, pitching his tent with Bethel to the west and Ai to the east. He built an altar there to the LORD and invoked the LORD by name. Genesis 12:1-8
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The Call of the First Disciples. 18 As he was walking by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon who is called Peter, and his brother Andrew, casting a net into the sea; they were fishermen. 19 He said to them, “Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men.” 20 At once they left their nets and followed him. 21 He walked along from there and saw two other brothers, James, the son of Zebedee, and his brother John. They were in a boat, with their father Zebedee, mending their nets. He called them, 22 and immediately they left their boat and their father and followed him.
Matthew 4:18-22 |
Section 3: You may wish to be silent for a few minutes.
Section 4: Offer prayer in your own words speaking to God who is for us, with us and in us.