"Free Tibet."

That's what the bumper sticker said.

I'm a pessimist when it comes to bumper stickers. No matter how hard I try, my initial reaction is almost always negative. Perhaps it is their unabashed prominence -- displayed as though they are the single most important truth in the world.

My first response to this one was, "Why Tibet? Why not one of the five blue gabillion other impoverished and foreign dominated countries out there? And why this particular issue? There's a whole wide world of noble causes between here and Tibet? I began to consider the statistics that a CNN documentary had recently given concerning AIDS in Africa. The suffering was well beyond my ability to comprehend it.

It was here that the "other" side predictably chimed in.

"Why not Tibet," it said, "You've got to believe in something -- might as well be Tibet." There was a substantial pause in the internal dialogue.

"Hmm," side "A" pondered.

"At least she appears to be concerned with someone other than herself," side "B" continued, "There's no 'Free ANYTHING' sticker on that Porsche over there ..." (This is not an indictment of ALL Porsche drivers mind you -- just some of them ...)

"True," side "A" responded in a manner reminiscent of a recent Budweiser commercial.

But the question remained. How do we pick "our issues"? What leads one person to commit a significant portion of his or her life to protection of the environment while another fights inner city homelessness and still another focuses on the sufferings of starving children?

What "calls us" to our particular causes?

Fresh out of college and gainfully employed at my brothers delicatessen, I possessed for the first time in my life what could be defined as disposable income.

And disposable it was. To the best of my recollection it was disposed of on rent, CDs, late nights out with the guys, food, CDs, gasoline, beer, the electric bill, CDs and late nights out with the guys.

Pretty much in that order.

But being young and, dare I say, even more idealistic than I am at present, I was open to the call of the 20 or more solicitations that came my way in the mail every month. How to decide I wondered?

Eventually, I came to the conclusion that when you can't eat you've got more of a problem than when you can't see or hear a spotted owl, so I settled on "Save the Children" as my primary "charity" -- this in spite of Sally Struthers exceedingly mushy and overdone late night appeals.

"But what about all those other agencies that are doing good work out there?," side "B" would soon solemnly ask in a guilt inspiring voice that was not unlike that of Tony Randall when he played Felix Unger in TV's "The Odd Couple."

"Yes there are certainly others that do so," side "A" would respond, "but 'Save the Children' spends the largest portion of their donated dollars on program services."

"Oh," side "B" would concede, and the case was usually rested. Thank God for Oscar Madison.

Some years later, however, as revelations came and, for lack of a better word, I "matured." (There are many of you who will certainly debate that one.) I became strongly aware that as someone who believed that Jesus Christ was indeed who he said he was, I was called to serve others in ways that went beyond the mere sending of what was really not a great sum of money.

But the questions beckoned. How? Where? What? When?

I would like to say that I offered the question fervently in prayer, but I was not then, nor do I see myself now, as a particularly good "pray-er," at least not in the traditional understanding. If I try to pray at night as I once did as a child in bed, I typically fall asleep while doing so.

I suspect God became tired long ago of the way most of those conversations end.

But if one's thoughts and reflections can be counted, in the sense that we view our very lives as prayers themselves, then I suppose I "prayed" over it well enough. One day about three months after I began to seriously contemplate this aspect of my life, the phone rang and the senior minister of our church bid me a good afternoon and said, "Stuart, you've been nominated to be an ordained elder at Second Presbyterian. What do you think?." It was perhaps the last thing on Earth that I expected him to say. I was not even sure what the complete role of elder might be at our church.

"Uh ... What's involved?" I stammered, feeling ill prepared to even consider the prospect much less the honor I would one day feel.

"Come by and we'll talk," my gracious minister replied.

I did and we did, and I was and I am, and somewhere in the process I have learned that God has a way of putting our "callings" and "causes" in front of us like obstacles that can be gone around or under or over or ... Or we may choose to go "through" them -- taking the time to honestly discern our gifts and the resources available to us that we might change hearts and lives for the better.

When we accept the grace to do so, we invariably find something of the mysterious and unexpected nature of God awaiting us -- in life-affirming experiences that transcend the time and the effort and the unsure moments, and it is our hearts and lives that are far the better for it.

And I have found that neither my "A" or "B" side tends to argue much with that.