Called at the plow
Elijah calls Elisha
Elisha was not in a temple or a school when the call came. He was plowing — twelve yoke of oxen in front of him, an ordinary man doing ordinary, dusty work. Elijah simply walked by and threw his mantle over him.
Elisha's response was immediate and total: he slaughtered the oxen, burned the plow to cook them, fed the people, and followed. The call found him mid-task, in the middle of an ordinary day — and he did not wait for a more spiritual setting to answer it.
“Let me kiss my father and my mother, and then I will follow you.”
— Elisha, when Elijah called him — 1 Kings 19:20 (WEB)
God's call often finds you in the ordinary, mid-task. Don't wait for a more spiritual setting to answer it wholeheartedly.
“No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for God's Kingdom.”
Elisha was faithfully working, not waiting for lightning, when the mantle fell — and he answered with everything, burning the plow behind him. A leader formed here stays alert to God in ordinary work and is ready to respond without hedging. He does not despise the dusty, present task as the place a call might come. The inner work is faithful readiness in the ordinary, and wholeheartedness when the call lands.
Watch for leaders not only among the obviously spiritual but among the faithfully ordinary, working hard at unglamorous tasks. When you call someone up, ask for a real, burn-the-plow commitment, not a tentative half-yes. Honor present faithfulness as the soil calling grows in. Do not wait for perfect conditions to step into what God is clearly putting before you.
Leaders romanticize the dramatic call and overlook the ordinary one, both in themselves and in the quietly faithful people around them. The blind spot is assuming significant callings only come in significant settings.
Notice this week where God may be calling you through your ordinary work rather than around it. Take one concrete, plow-burning step of commitment toward it instead of waiting for a more dramatic moment.
We tend to expect God's call to arrive in dramatic, set-apart moments — and sometimes it does. But far more often it finds us mid-task, in the middle of faithful ordinary work, and asks for a wholehearted yes right where we are.
Are you waiting for a more spiritual setting to take God's call seriously — when he may be throwing the mantle over you right in the middle of an ordinary Tuesday?