Rooted in the Christian contemplative traditions, the Daily Meditations offer reflections from Richard Rohr, CAC faculty and guest teachers to help you deepen your spiritual practice and embody compassion in the world.
Called by God
Friday 23 January 2026 God Is Calling Every One
Father Richard reflects on what it means to respond to God’s call:
What, then, does it mean to follow the call of Jesus?
History is continually graced with people who somehow learned to act beyond and outside their self-interest and for the good of the world, people who clearly operated by a power larger than their own. Consider Gandhi, Oskar Schindler, and Martin Luther King Jr. Add to them Rosa Parks, Mother Teresa, Dorothy Day, Óscar Romero, César Chávez, and many unsung leaders. Their inspiring witness offers us strong evidence that the mind of Christ still inhabits the world. Most of us are fortunate to have crossed paths with many lesser-known persons who exhibit the same presence. I can’t say how one becomes such a person. All I can presume is that they were all called. They all had their Christ moments, in which they stopped denying their own shadows, stopped projecting those shadows elsewhere, and agreed to own their deepest identity in solidarity with the world.
But it is not an enviable position, this Christian thing.
Following Jesus is a vocation to share the fate of God for the life of the world.
To allow what, for some reason, God allows—and uses.
And to suffer ever so slightly what God suffers eternally.
Often, this has little to do with believing the right things about God—beyond the fact that God is love itself.
Those who respond to the call and agree to carry and love what God loves—which is both the good and the bad—and to pay the price for its reconciliation within themselves, these are the followers of Jesus Christ. They are the leaven, the salt, the remnant, the mustard seed that God uses to transform the world. The cross, then, is a very dramatic image of what it takes to be usable for God. It does not mean they are going to heaven and others are not; rather, it means they have entered into heaven much earlier and thus can see things now in a transcendent, whole, and healing way.
Saints are those who wake up while in this world, instead of waiting for the next one. Francis of Assisi, William Wilberforce, Thérèse of Lisieux, and Harriet Tubman didn’t feel superior to anyone else; they just knew they had been let in on a big divine secret, and they wanted to do their part in revealing it.
God is calling every one and every thing, not just a few chosen ones, to God’s self (Genesis 8:15–17; Ephesians 1:9–10; Colossians 1:15–20). To get every one and every thing there, God first needs models and images who are willing to be “conformed to the body of Christ’s death” and transformed into the body of Christ’s resurrection (Philippians 3:10). These are the “new creation” (Galatians 6:15), and their transformed state is still seeping into history and ever so slowly transforming it into “life and life more abundantly” (John 10:10).
Thursday 22 January 2026 Stand and I Will Be With You
I heard the voice of Jesus saying still to fight on.
—Martin Luther King Jr., The Autobiography of Martin Luther King Jr.
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. recounts the violent threats that grew in response to his work for justice:
Almost immediately after the protest [in Montgomery, Alabama] started we had begun to receive threatening telephone calls and letters. They increased as time went on. By the middle of January, they had risen to thirty and forty a day….
As the weeks passed, I began to see that many of the threats were in earnest. Soon I felt myself faltering and growing in fear…. One night at a mass meeting, I found myself saying, “If one day you find me sprawled out dead, I do not want you to retaliate with a single act of violence. I urge you to continue protesting with the same dignity and discipline you have shown so far.”
After receiving a threatening late-night phone call, King’s resolve was renewed through prayer and an experience of God’s presence and call:
It seemed that all of my fears had come down on me at once. I had reached the saturation point…. I was ready to give up…. I tried to think of a way to move out of the picture without appearing a coward…. And I got to the point that I couldn’t take it any longer…. With my head in my hands, I bowed over the kitchen table and prayed aloud. The words I spoke to God that midnight are still vivid in my memory: “Lord, I’m down here trying to do what’s right. I think I’m right. I am here taking a stand for what I believe is right. But Lord, I must confess that I’m weak now, I’m faltering. I’m losing my courage. Now, I am afraid. And I can’t let the people see me like this because if they see me weak and losing my courage, they will begin to get weak. The people are looking to me for leadership, and if I stand before them without strength and courage, they too will falter. I am at the end of my powers. I have nothing left. I’ve come to the point where I can’t face it alone.”
It seemed as though I could hear the quiet assurance of an inner voice saying: “Martin Luther, stand up for righteousness. Stand up for justice. Stand up for truth. And lo, I will be with you. Even until the end of the world.”
I tell you I’ve seen the lightning flash. I’ve heard the thunder roar. I’ve felt sin breakers dashing trying to conquer my soul. But I heard the voice of Jesus saying still to fight on. He promised never to leave me alone. At that moment I experienced the presence of the Divine as I had never experienced Him before. Almost at once my fears began to go. My uncertainty disappeared. I was ready to face anything.
Story From Our Community
I was diagnosed with cancer at 48 and then again at 70. After receiving a stage 4 metastatic cancer diagnosis, I am overwhelmed by the divine joy that I see in my life through God’s presence everywhere. I am blessed by a devoted husband, children who love me, and grandchildren who are the joy and light of our lives. Father Richard always talks about the power of great love and great suffering. I am astounded to see how much love God reveals through nature and loved ones even in the midst of difficulty.
—Kit E.
The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr., ed. Clayborne Carson (Grand Central Publishing, 2001), 76, 77–78.
Wednesday 21 January 2026 Listening for a Sacred Call
Author Mirabai Starr describes how the histories of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have been shaped by people who were brave enough to listen to and obey God’s call:
Not all prophets do as they are told. Not at first, anyway. When the call comes, most of them turn left and then right: “Who, me?” they murmur. If the call is a true one, the voice of the Holy Spirit will roar: “Yes, you!”
Even then, the prophet will haggle with the Holy One. “There must be someone better suited to speak for the Divine.” But the God of Love is a patient God. The God of Love calls once, twice, three times. Only then does the prophet square her shoulders, gird her loins, open her hands, and say, “Hineni. Here I am.”
The history of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam abounds with accounts of great beings who trembled when they were confronted with the presence of the Divine and given a task of global dimensions. Traditionally, this reluctance is implied, rather than stated, yet when we read the scriptures with an open heart, we can feel the anguish behind the submission.
Responding to God’s call always comes at a cost:
It is said that the Divine does not choose the wealthy and powerful to be prophets. [God] picks farmers and illiterate caravan drivers, orphans and poor Jewish virgins. [God] favors the ones who stand up…, talk back…, the ones who challenge the divine directive. When the angel of the Lord told the matriarch Sarah that she was going to become the mother of many nations, Sarah laughed. She was long past the age of childbearing, and the patriarch Abraham was even older. When her son was born the following year, they named him Isaac, which means “laughter.”…
“The prophets of Israel,” Karen Armstrong writes in A History of God, “experienced their God as a physical pain that wrenched their every limb and filled them with pain and elation.” Adrienne von Speyr says that the prophets are “inconsolable.” It is easy to see why they might have been reluctant to answer the call.
It is not only the biblical prophets who paid this price for responding to the divine summons. Prominent modern activists, imbued with the teachings of the God of Love, risked their lives on behalf of the most vulnerable among us….
Countless women and men—known and unknown—stand up every day to give voice to the voiceless—not because it seems like the right thing to do, but because they have no choice: The call comes storming through the gates of their hearts like an invading army, and they stand aside. In the act of surrendering to the Divine, the prophet relinquishes comfort, control, and any hope of being understood.
Tuesday 20 January 2026 God Calls Those on the Margins
She was an Egyptian slave in a foreign land away from her people and seemingly without anyone’s protection. But God knew Hagar and God called on her to be a part of [God’s] plan.
—Marjorie A. White, The Five Books of Moses
Womanist theologian Delores Williams (1937–2022) connects the call Hagar experienced in the wilderness to the experiences of African American women.
Although many themes in African-American women’s history correspond with many themes in Hagar’s story in the Bible, nothing links the two women together more securely than their religious experiences in the wilderness [see Genesis 21]…. Many African-American slave women have left behind autobiographies telling how they would slip away to the wilderness or to “the hay-stack where the presence of the Lord overshadowed” them. [1] Some of them governed their lives according to their mothers’ counsel that they would have “nobody in the wide world to look to but God” [2]—as Hagar in the final stages of her story had only God to look to….
For many black Christian women today, “wilderness” or “wilderness-experience” is a symbolic term used to represent a near-destruction situation in which God gives personal direction to the believer and thereby helps her make a way out of what she thought was no way.
Williams points to God’s support for Hagar as an ongoing source of inspiration and courage:
In the biblical story Hagar’s wilderness experience happened in a desolate and lonely wilderness where she—pregnant, fleeing from the brutality of her slave owner, Sarai, and without protection—had religious experiences that helped her and her child survive when survival seemed doomed. For both Hagar and the African-American women, the wilderness experience meant standing utterly alone, in the midst of serious trouble, with only God’s support to rely upon.
As the result of these hard-time experiences and the encounters with God, Hagar and many African-American women manifested a risk-taking faith. Though she obeyed God’s mandate for her life, Hagar dared to give a name to the God she met in the wilderness. In a sense, this God is her God, and possibly not the God of her slave holders Abram and Sarai. No other person in the Bible names God. Many African-American women (slave and free) have taken serious risks in the black community’s liberation struggle. For example, in the midst of the violence and brutality that accompanied slavery in America, Harriet Tubman, with a price on her head, dared to liberate over three hundred slaves. She served as a spy and a general in the Civil War. She is said to have relied solely upon God for help and strength; she had no one else to look to. Thus we can speak of Hagar and many African-American women as sisters in the wilderness struggling for life, and by the help of their God coming to terms with situations that have destructive potential. [3]
Story From Our Community
I feel like the “Hopeful Unknown” is my motto this year, since my partner died unexpectedly six months ago. There were, and still are, many unknowns, as losing him and his partnership has touched every single area of my life. Now that the sharp, unimaginable grief is softening, it’s been just recently that I can call this unknown future, hopeful.
—Colleen A.
[1] Elizabeth, Memoir of Old Elizabeth, a Coloured Woman (Collins, 1863), 7. See Six Women’s Slave Narratives, ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (Oxford University Press, 1988).
[2] Elizabeth, Memoir, 4.
[3] Delores S. Williams, Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God-Talk (Orbis Books, 2013), 96–97.
Monday 19 January 2026 Abraham’s Call
The story of Abraham is a mythic, primeval story, so much so that it became the founding myth of the three monotheistic religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
—Richard Rohr, Soul Brothers
CAC faculty member Brian McLaren describes how God called Abraham (initially Abram) and Sarah to a new covenant:
According to the ancient stories of Genesis, God is up to something surprising and amazing in our world. While we’re busy plotting evil, God is plotting goodness…. While we plot ways to use God to get blessings for ourselves, God stays focused on the big picture of blessing the world—which includes blessing us in the process.
You see this pattern unfold when God chooses a man named Abram and a woman named Sara. They are from a prominent family in an ancient city-state known as Ur, one of the first ancient Middle Eastern civilizations. Like all civilizations, Ur has a dirty little secret: its affluence is built on violence, oppression, and exploitation….
God tells this couple to leave their life of privilege in this great civilization. He sends them out into the unknown as wanderers and adventurers. No longer will Abram and Sara have the armies and wealth and comforts of Ur at their disposal. All they will have is a promise—that God will be with them and show them a better way. From now on, they will make a new road by walking.
Abraham and Sarah’s trust in God’s call is a model for our faith:
This story also tells us something about true faith. Faith is stepping off the map of what’s known and making a new road by walking into the unknown. It’s responding to God’s call to adventure, stepping out on a quest for goodness, trusting that the status quo isn’t as good as it gets, believing a promise that a better life is possible.
True faith isn’t a deal where we use God to get the inside track or a special advantage or a secret magic formula for success. It isn’t a mark of superiority or exclusion. True faith is about joining God in God’s love for everyone. It’s about seeking goodness with others, not at the expense of others. True faith is seeing a bigger circle in which we are all connected, all included, all loved, all blessed….
Sadly, for many people, faith has been reduced to a list. For some, it’s a list of beliefs: ideas or statements that we have to memorize and assent to if we want to be blessed. For others, it’s a list of dos and don’ts: rituals or rules that we have to perform…. But Abram didn’t have much in the way of beliefs, rules, or rituals. He had no Bibles, doctrines, temples, commandments, or ceremonies. For him, true faith was simply trusting a promise of being blessed to be a blessing. It wasn’t a way of being religious: it was a way of being alive.
Sunday 18 January 2026 Follow Me
They said to him, “Rabbi” (which translated means teacher), “where are you staying?” He said to them, “Come and see.” —John 1:38–39
Father Richard Rohr considers the invitation to discipleship Jesus extends today:
When Jesus goes out to Galilee, his initial preaching is summed up in the verse, “Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand” (Matthew 4:17; Mark 1:15). “Repent” (or metanoia in Greek) means to turn around, to change. The first word that comes out of Jesus’s mouth is repent, change.
Jesus calls us to be willing to change, but many of us are not willing to change, simply because we’re not willing to turn away from ourselves! Usually, we’re not in love with God. Instead, we’re in love with our way of thinking, our way of explaining, our way of doing things. One of the greatest ways to protect ourselves from God, from truth and grace, is simply to buy into some kind of cheap conventionalism and call it tradition.
But great traditions always call people on a journey of faith to keep changing. There’s no other way the human person can open up to all that God is asking of us. There’s no way we can open up to all we have to learn or experience, unless we’re willing to let go of the idols of yesterday and the idols of today. The best protection from the next word of God is the last word of God. We take what we heard from God last year (or from authority figures in our first half of life) and we build a whole system around it—and then we sit there for the rest of our lives.
Immediately after he begins preaching, Jesus calls his first four disciples. Jesus just says, “Follow me” and immediately they leave their nets and follow him (Matthew 4:19–20). But today, the way I see people transformed doesn’t happen this quickly. Maybe it happened that way with Jesus and the disciples; I don’t want to say that it didn’t. A true disciple will have that kind of readiness. Most of us, though, would prefer some process of conversion, a series of conversations over a few weeks, with Jesus saying, “Hey, I’m into something new. Do you want to be a part of it? Let’s go.”
I hope we realize that we’re all called to discipleship. We hope that the point comes when we’re ready to let go of our nets: our sense of self, our security systems, and the way it’s always been. Fishing is Simon (Peter) and Andrew’s economic livelihood, and Jesus says to let go of it. He says essentially, “I’m going to teach you how to fish in a new way, to fish for people” (Matthew 4:19). What he means is that he’s going to give them a new vocation. Hearing this Gospel passage, I hope we’re inspired to ask, “What is God asking us to do? Where is God asking us to go?”
Story From Our Community
I am 81 and life still amazes me. I used to think I would grow up and stop seeking. Now, I am sure I will never stop. Life doesn’t change so much as the experience of it intensifies—joy, beauty, and brilliance, along with sadness, anxiety, compassion. As I experience love more, so I experience sorrow. All my life I’ve wondered what my true vocation was. I know now that I’m meant to live deeply with all the complexity of being human.
—Claire M.
Adapted from Richard Rohr, The Four Gospels (Center for Action and Contemplation, 1987). Available as MP3 audio download.
Image credit and inspiration: Levi Ventura, untitled (detail), 2019, photo, Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. Like this small green plant, we are called to grow in our own unique soils, spaces, and places.
CAC faculty member Brian McLaren shares the theme for the 2026 Daily Meditations. Watch the video.
Story From Our Community
James Finley says, “God sustains us in all things while protecting us from nothing.” I’ve come to believe that it’s only through seeing God in our suffering that we can truly be free from the fear that causes us to choose ways of being that are not loving. Even in our fear, when we choose not to love, God is there. God has not, could not, and will not ever forsake us. God is not safe, but God is good. It’s the same thing to say that reality is not safe, but reality is good.
—Heather C.
[1] Adapted from Brian D. McLaren, 2026 Daily Meditations Theme: Good News for a Fractured World, Center for Action and Contemplation, video, 6:38.
[2] Brian D. McLaren, Do I Stay Christian? A Guide for the Doubters, the Disappointed, and the Disillusioned (St. Martin’s Essentials, 2022), 138, 139–140.
Image credit and inspiration: Paul Macallan, untitled (detail), 2021, photo, Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. Like this bright flower, the gift of contemplation and action brings us hope in the midst of painful reality.
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Christine Valters Paintner on Seeking a Word
Author Christine Valters Paintner shares how the desert mystics have wisdom for us today.
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Click the image for the latest from ‘News from New Mexico’.
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