Even from my earliest years, I have always felt a certain longing and hunger inside me, prodding and urging me on. I have also always heard a certain call and clear invitation from someone, somewhere to follow a certain direction, a certain path in my life.
I have always been selfish and self-centered, looking out for Number One. And He has always called me to follow Him in the path of generosity and living my life for others. I have always been one given to physical comforts and pleasures. He has told me instead to follow the path of detachment and denial, cleansing myself of inordinate desires through discipline, pain and suffering. It is so easy for me to give way to hating and anger. He has led me to the path of love and forgiveness and compassion. I am too easily swayed to be slothful and then to be jealous of others. He has taught me to be joyful at all times, rejoicing in the good that I see, specially in others.
I have seen pictures supposedly of him. But I doubt if they are even remotely like what he actually looked like. I can get a glimpse of the person that He is through His words that He left us, words that have inspired and changed lives down the ages. I have seen Him in the lives and works of the many men He has inspired and whose lives He has changed. I feel His presence in all the good people I have met and in the love and concern that have been given to me by them. I have seen Him in the morning as the sun rises over the horizon and at the setting of the sun at the end of the day. He stays with me as I sleep and recharge for yet another day he will give me.
Yes, I have decided to follow Jesus.
As Jesus walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea–for they were fishermen. And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.” Immediately they left their nets and followed him. As he went from there, he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John, in the boat with their father Zebedee, mending their nets, and he called them. Immediately they left the boat and their father, and followed him.