God Would Have Made a Very Bad HRM Manager

I used to do Human Resources Management, where I researched, recruited and retained excellent people for the companies I worked for. I looked for people who had top caliber talents, demonstrable skills and credentialed experience. Mediocre, unskilled and inexperienced people need not apply. I was looking for winners to become a part of a winning team. This was the standard practice as well of all my HRM friends, as we competed for the best talents in the labor market.

When Christ went about to recruit his first followers, he did the exact opposite. He sought out the unlettered, the uneducated, people with very simple skills, those who were even considered as outcasts by society like tax collectors and the poor. He recruited the sinners and the whiners, not the winners. This went against all conventional wisdom; it went against the ways of the world. Yet, he transformed these simple people and changed the course of human history. This was the way chosen by him who set the stars on theirs courses and the made possible the wonderful unfolding of the universe. And it worked!

When Christ calls and invites me to follow him, I encounter him not in my victories or glories. Instead, he seeks me in my brokenness, fragility, my frail humanity and, yes, in my sinfulness and weakness. He does not condemn me but raises me up from where I am to the next level. It is when I am out of my depths that the Lord comes to stretch out his hand and pull me out of the mess I am in. I should not be afraid then to put out into the deep where he is waiting for me.

There is a certain and inexorable unfolding in all of creation that makes all things new. There is a defined cycle and rhythm in the universe that brings all things ever one to the next level, making them ever more beautiful, fuller and better than before. What I see around me and what I experience within me, God has formed out of the dust and cinder of dying stars. Out of barren twigs and branches, he coaxes out new life, bright colors and food for man’s sustenance. I only need to trust that God is working in, through and with me in this wonderful experience called life as part of the unfolding of the universe.

When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at the knees of Jesus and said,
“Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.”
For astonishment at the catch of fish they had made seized him and all those with him,
and likewise James and John, the sons of Zebedee, who were partners of Simon.
Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men.”
When they brought their boats to the shore, they left everything and followed him. Luke 5:1-11