Gwahoddiad

I was nineteen, in my uni halls in Cardiff, when I prayed a strange kind of prayer: 'God, I’m not going to speak with you anymore.'

It wasn’t that I suddenly believed God didn’t exist. I just didn’t want him in my life. I gave him a kind of goodbye speech, deciding, like so many do, 'I’ll do it my way.'

I grew up in Church, a Pastor’s kid, surrounded by melodies of majesty, hymns of hope, songs of the sacred. Sunday mornings were for church, and I had grown up loving it. But somewhere between middle-child mischief and teenage arrogance, I decided church was too restrictive. I thought I knew better than God Almighty.

So off I went to Cardiff Uni, to live an independent life, more concerned with moving out than an actual education. And I have this vivid memory, this moment, crystallised in my mind as I fossilised my faith, made it something of the past, something to look at, but not live by. 

I gave up attending church, no longer listened to worship, let alone cracked open the pages of my dusty Bible. I began to live like everyone else, blending in with wildness rather than standing out with conviction. I was the life and soul of the party, and just living like everyone else. The songs of the club were my liturgy, the pursuit of pleasure, my prayer. Boys and booze were my priorities, my life on the altar of the party.

For a while, it felt like freedom. But the shine wore off quickly. What was advertised as liberation was a marketing lie. I bought what the world was selling, and found the price too steep. On a high in the night, but low in the morning. Nursing the symptoms of a hangover, when the root cause festered in my soul.

As I spiralled downward, I became lonelier and lonelier, felt lower than ever before. I was empty and lost, and didn’t even know it, let alone how to fix it.

Until a song somehow got stuck in my head. A ear-worm I just couldn’t shift. An anthem of a bygone age, a Welsh hymn my father loved but I had hated. ‘Mi glywaf dyner lais yn galw arnaf i…': I hear your tender voice, calling on me, the hymn begins.

I couldn’t shake it. So I searched for it online. I found low-quality videos of male voice choirs in echoey halls with shaky cameras and poor audio, or another version by Cerys Matthews, but regardless of style, I sat there on my bed, tears rolling down my face as they sang of this Gwahoddiad, this Invitation, and this song broke through the hard exterior of my heart and revived something of faith in me again.Arglwydd, dyma fi, ar dy alwad di. // Golch fi’n burlan yn y gwaed a gaed ar Calfari.
 Lord, here I am on your call. // Wash me CLEAM in the blood that flowed at Calvary.

Singing of the hill where Jesus died so that we could truly live.

After a while, I called home, and told them I was dropping out of Uni, which wasn’t much of a surprise, but I was heading to Bible College instead. Which was definitely shocking.

I went to Life Church in Bradford, where I fell back in love with the Church, with the Word of God, with worship. And bit by bit, God pieced my life back together — heart, hope, purpose. I’ve never been the same. All because of grace, carried to me in song.

Because of that Gwahoddiad: that Invitation that was extended to me.

One that Scripture is clear, we all have. An invitation to come, to hear that tender voice that calls us home, calls us back, from however far we’ve wandered, to be made new, made truly alive.
Jesus says in John 10:10 ‘I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full': this is real life, real living, all because Jesus has already paid it all.

So I sang it then, and I confess it now: Arglwydd, dyma fi, ar dy alwad di. Lord, here I am, on your call.

Perhaps even reading this today is an invitation to sing these words again. Perhaps, this melody of majesty, this hymn of hope, this song of the sacred, could change everything for whoever has ears to hear.

I’m fairly confident that I’m not alone in that feeling: that the world had left me empty, bankrupt in my soul, with faith that had fossilised. Maybe it's time to lean in, and listen again: can you hear the Gwahoddiad of Heaven?