When the call doesn't come.

So, we wait anxiously to discover who Thomas Tuchel has selected for England’s World Cup squad, just as the tournament prepares to take over our lives.

One player not going is Manchester United’s centre-half, Harry Maguire. Apparently, he’s gutted. “I was confident I could have [sic] played a major part this summer for my country after the season I’ve had,” Maguire tweeted. “I’ve been left shocked and gutted by the decision.”

Not mildly disappointed. Not philosophical. Not “taking the positives.” Gutted. The dream has gone. The door has closed. The call has not come.

And perhaps that is where football touches something much deeper than football.

Most of us know, in one form or another, what it feels like not to be chosen. Not picked for the team. Not shortlisted for the job. Not included in the invitation. Not recognised for what we have given. We may put on a brave face, but inside we feel the ache of rejection.

When I was chair of our school’s governing body, one of my tasks was to phone those we had just interviewed to tell them they had not got the job. I always felt a heel, but I tried to give it to them straight. There was no point pretending it was not disappointing, or trying to sugar-coat what they were feeling.

As I regularly remind my daughters, life is tough.

But the good news is this: God uses rejects.

The Bible is full of them.

Moses was a fugitive with a stammer. David was the youngest son, left out in the fields when Samuel came looking for a king. Gideon saw himself as the weakest member of the weakest clan. Jeremiah thought he was too young. Peter denied Jesus three times. Paul had once persecuted the church.

And yet God used them.

Again and again, God seems to pass over the obvious candidates and call the unlikely ones. You get the feeling that he positively enjoys using those who have failed, those who have been left behind on the bench.

He takes people who feel disqualified and gives them a purpose. He takes failure and turns it into service. He takes shame and transforms it into testimony.

I recall inviting Shane Taylor to speak at one of our Alpha launch meetings. He was a lovely guy: gentle, open, and very honest. It was hard to believe that he had once been described as one of the UK’s most dangerous prisoners. He is a living example of how God likes a challenge. God chooses the rejected.

That does not mean rejection does not hurt. It does. The Christian faith is not a plaster over pain. Jesus himself knew rejection. “He came to his own, and his own did not receive him,” reflects the beloved disciple.  He was despised, mocked, abandoned, and crucified outside the city wall.

At the cross, Jesus stood in the place of the rejected. Abandoned, mocked, condemned and crucified, he was written off by the world. Yet, as Tim Keller put it, “we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope.”

The rejected Christ becomes the place where rejected people discover they are accepted by God.

That is the heart of the gospel. Human rejection is not the final verdict. The world may say, “Not good enough.” God may say, “You are mine.” The world may close a door. God may open a calling. The world may write someone off. God may only be beginning.

And there again, you never know. I don’t know what the future holds for Harry, but I do know this: being rejected from one position may sometimes make us available for the very place to which God is calling us.

I well remember way back in 1979 opening a letter from a public school informing me that I had not been appointed as their school chaplain — even though the headmaster had assured me I was the strongest candidate.

Looking back, I suspect my bishop may have put a spoke in the wheel. But with hindsight, it was clearly the right outcome.

Not that it felt like that at the time.

There are disappointments that feel final but are not. There are closed doors that redirect us. There are failures that humble us and prepare us. There are rejections that strip away our pride and make us more useful in the hands of God.

Harry Maguire may be gutted. Anyone would be. But being left out of a squad is not the end of a life, a career, or a calling.

And the same is true for us.

You may feel overlooked. You may feel past your best. You may feel that others have moved on without you. But God has a long history of using people others have rejected. In fact, he built his church on a rejected cornerstone: “The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.”  This quote from Psalm 118 appears in the New Testament no less than five times. 

That is not just a verse about Jesus. It is a reminder of the strange, surprising way God works.

He uses the overlooked.He restores the fallen.He calls the unlikely.He gives purpose to the gutted.

And in his hands, even rejection can become resurrection.