“Lord, why did You choose to bring me into this world?
What mission did You breathe into me on the day I was born?”

And the hymn answers with a whisper I’ve heard since childhood:

“I, the Lord of sea and sky,
I have heard My people cry…”

God already heard the cries of God’s people and was shaping a heart within me that could one day respond. My birthday is God’s quiet way of saying: “I called you long before you knew how to answer.”

Then comes the refrain that formed my life vocation:

“Here I am, Lord.
Is it I, Lord?
I have heard You calling in the night.”

Those words capture perfectly the trembling of the soul, both the desire and the fear, the availability and the unworthiness. Every year on my birthday, I hear that question anew: “Will you keep saying yes?”

Religious vocation is not a single moment of surrender but a daily offering, a lifetime of returning to the Lord with empty hands and saying: “Take my years, take my studies, take my youth, take my weakness—
use everything for Your people.”

Finally, the hymn ends with a promise that shapes my mission as a young man:

“I will go, Lord, if You lead me.
I will hold Your people in my heart.”

That is my prayer today:
To let God lead more than before.
To love God’s people more faithfully than before.
To be less concerned with being brilliant, and more concerned with being present.
To speak less as a scholar and more as a shepherd.
To remember that theology is not an abstract study, but a way of holding God’s people in my heart, just as Christ holds them in His.

And so, on this special day, I renew my simple prayer:

“Here I am, Lord.
I am Yours again.
Send me wherever Your love is needed.”

With love,

Little-pencil