This past weekend, I was walking in the sea-wind on the Mississippi gulf coast with a good old friend who is a pastor down there. Somehow she and I began talking about 'calling'. This has always been a very ambiguous word for me and even a very frustrating thing to confront. I grew up thinking that you were supposed to have this absolute, kind of soul-piercing transcendent vocalization of the meaning of your life before you would be able to begin living it. There comes a point when that expectation either crushes you or breaks itself. These days I'm seeing calling has a cumulative quality. Kind of like relationship.
It's when I look back that it becomes more clear to me that God has been framing a context for how I participate with Him in His life now. There have been soul-shaping holy whispers along the way. The relationship with Jesus has changed as I've gradually learned what's important to God. Within the framework of exposure to God's life and work my desires adjusted in focus and my gifts have been developing. At this point, I am just beginning to stand back and observe that all this is going somewhere, that there is an intentional movement.
It's a very personal thing. I believe there is a general calling and mission that is shared by all who follow Jesus (and all who don't). We all are called in Christ to carry on his mission and work. Though that work is specific, how we flesh it out as real particular people often ends up volitionally vague. It's a creative opportunity though, relationship is. And though I have a general sense of the purpose of relationship, I sometimes have no idea what the heck I'm doing with it in any definitive way.
In the end, God is bringing his mission to life in me. Not through a singular explosive communication, but through familial attentive communion. I feel my gifts ripening and making sense and even reaching out into new possibilities. I see love among friends growing into new Kingdom Contexts. I am amazed to discover faith growing as the Father speaks the strength of his love against the sin that is "ever before me". The Story of Scripture, the very life of God, continues to give me a location in existence - a heritage (I came from somewhere) and an inheritance (I'm going somewhere). That means I have a place in God's life and work right now in the Present.
Calling then, has to do with Communion, with the accumulation of relationship with Jesus, with the ongoing maintenance of attachment through the Holy Spirit, and the faithful care and invitation of the Father to live as a member of his household.
ps. Please comment and share your experience of finding a place in God's life/story.
We sometimes act like “calling” is an event, when you’re told one time to do something forever… instead of “calling” being a present-tense ongoing action of responding to God’s call.
ReplyDelete“I am just beginning to stand back and observe that all this is going somewhere, that there is an intentional movement”
That’s how I’ve felt this month too, noticing the way God’s been doing things in and around me. Ecclesiastes helps me to keep perspective on my story being created to exist within God’s story, and how it’s distorted without his context. It makes me think of simplicity, duplicity, and reality, and how we’re constantly bombarded by fantasy and the temptation of living a meaningless life. Ecclesiastes warns “all labor and achievement spring from man’s envy of his neighbor.”
Spending our lives seeking comfort, wealth, and stereotypical beauty is a story that is disguised as worthwhile by the fantasy of advertising, commercialism, and the entertainment industry. You’d think that with a name like “entertainment industry” we’d know that it’s not a paradigm for how to live.
We can’t serve both God and mammon… we can’t commit to two stories governed by different authors; but there needs to be commitment, because without it we participate in ongoing stories, tragic stories, without even realizing it. There must be simplicity, committing to one story and forsaking all others, and that’s the big challenge.
i loved what you said about there being "soul-shaping holy whispers along the way." I can completely relate to that. Thanks for posting this one. It was good for me to read tonight, buddy.
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