According to the book No Ordinary Time, by Doris Kearns Goodwin, the first peacetime draft occurred October 29, 1940. President Franklin Roosevelt and Secretary of War Stimson sat on a stage in a crowded auditorium in Washington, D.C. In the preceding weeks all males between 21 and 35 had been given a draft number, and all those numbers were in cobalt capsules in a big fishbowl on the stage. Stinson was blindfolded with some yellow linen cloth cut from a chair used at the signing of the Declaration of Independence. He reached into the bowl and pulled out the first capsule he touched. He handed it to the President who read into the many microphones before him, "The first number is 158."

Goodwin writes:

No sooner had the president spoken than a women's scream was heard. Seated in the middle of the crowded auditorium, Mrs. Mildred Bell gasped. Her 21-year-old son, Harry, who was supposed to be married the following week, held number 158. Now his future was linked to that of his country. Number 158 was held by some six thousand registrants in different precincts throughout the country, including Cleveland welder Michael Thompson, father of three children; Jack Clardy, a one-armed Negro banjo picker from Charlotte, NC; and unemployed James Cody of Long Island City. In New York, the surnames of those bearing number 158 told a story in themselves: Farrugia, Chan, Re, Weisblum, Tsatsarones, Stoller, Clement. Some were pleased and proud to be the first number called, others said they'd make the best of it, still others were upset at their bad fortune.

God draws the number of all those he saves. We are called to be salt and light, to be ambassadors and priests, and there are no deferments. We're enlisted to display righteousness in a wicked world, to help the weak and feed the hungry, to represent the Living God, to tell sinners about Jesus. There is no one who is saved who is not drafted by God to be an agent of grace.