"With Christ, as with us all, it was no doubt difficult, so long as he was amid the surroundings of common life, to believe in the stirrings of a divine call within him.

The mystic promptings of the soul, the deep appealing look of men and things, the flash of inspired prayer into the mind, did not agree with the narrow home, the village cares, the synagogue routine: they would start away at the sound of plane and saw; be drowned in the gossip of neighbors; How should the youth suppose, even when the intimations were most full of wonder, that God had really sent for him?" 

  And so it is with us, regardless how powerful or mystical our salvation experience may be, when we are back to our routine among the common things of life, living in a low income house, weighed down by the burden of job demands, and the clamor of the factory's hammer and saw, or the office, filled with obscenities and gossip, and when church has become routine, how easy it is to doubt, even when the Spirit was most full of wonder, that God had really called us.

James Martineau, photo by Mg Lizi.