For The Sake Of The Call

Fishermen leave their gear on the shore: “Empty nets lying there at the water’s edge / Told a story that few could believe and none could explain.” Avalon builds the song around that scene from Matthew 4, where Jesus calls Simon and Andrew and they follow. The opening verse stresses how unglamorous it was: “Nobody stood and applauded them,” and the road ahead “would not lead to fame.”

The chorus gives the motive in plain terms: “We will abandon it all for the sake of the call.” Later lines pile up what that motive excludes, “Not for the sake of a creed or a cause / Not for a dream or a promise,” leaving only the fact that “it is Jesus who calls.” A river image in the third verse, drawn to the sea with “no turning back,” presents obedience as something that follows naturally once the Savior’s voice is heard.

Matthew 4:19 and Luke 5:11 sit under the story, and John 21:19 echoes in the vow to be “wholly devoted to live and to die.” The song asks listeners to see their own calling as the same kind of answer: not earned by reward, but given in response to being called by name.