Everyone has a calling or vocation, or even several. We just don’t tend to think about it using those terms. The word call, or calling, I suspect tends to be heard and understood as churchy. People feel called to ministry, and ministry itself is strongly tied to church language. Churches which select their own pastors or ministers call those individuals to be the community’s spiritual leaders, they don’t hire them (yes, they do get paid and offered benefits). But a calling is not limited to the church.
The Journal of Lutheran Ethics says “It refers above all to the whole theater of personal, communal, and historical relationships in which one lives.” So, in essence, it’s part of our daily lives. We tend not to think of caring for elderly parents or the chaos of raising children as a calling or vocation. Our jobs or careers may not be seen as our calling, which they may not be. And life gives us plenty that are just things we need to do, that are just that, obligations. But do all obligations need to viewed as drudgery?
If a sense of purpose and meaning is important to one’s wellbeing, how can we experience that more on a day-to-day level instead of thinking we need to attain a certain level of status, position, schooling, etc.? Of course, if one feels called to be a doctor, there is schooling needed to make that happen.
When I’ve listened to people talk about their sense of call (in a variety of fields) or read people’s call stories, service to others is always a piece of it. The origins of the word ministry at its root means service or servant. That hardly is limited to the church world. Plenty of people outside the church or other faith traditions serve in a wide variety of capacities as volunteers or as their careers.
What would it look like if terms like call, vocation, and ministry were claimed into the vernacular and made a more common part of our everyday conversations and thinking? In our faith communities, could we start to see that the person in pew can have as much of a calling to ministry, to serve, as the pastor? In our society, what if we begin to look at the things we do, paid positions, volunteer roles, our daily interactions with others, as callings? How am I called to be and to do in my life?
To answer that question, we need to notice the world around us, what is happening in our communities, the needs of others, and those coincidences and tugs or pokes on our hearts. Frederick Buechner is quoted as saying “Vocation is the place where your deep gladness meets the world’s deep need.” Sometimes that looks a bit more like being a doctor, a firefighter, a manager, or trash collector…pick your occupation. And sometimes is looks mundane and feels small like changing diapers, volunteering on a committee/council, or sitting with a friend who is hurting.
At times our calling can be instantaneous and brief, a response to a kairos moment that is indeed a call with immediacy. There is a children’s book by John Muth called The Three Questions, it’s an adaption of a Leo Tolstoy story, a young boys asks…
When is the best time to do things?
Who is the most important one?
What is the right thing to do?
The answer would be our calling of the moment. Or maybe there’s something we’ve been thinking about doing for a while, but uncertainties or life has held us back from taking the first step.
Maybe our sense of call comes from how we approach the things we do, with dread or joy, out of obligation or desire? Finding our sense of call will change over time as our life stages and circumstances change. But I think we do all have callings. Sometimes they are easy to recognize and sometimes we need to expand our view to do so maybe try something challenging. This past weekend I had the opportunity to do something I hadn’t really done in a few years and this wave of emotions washed over me, a realization of how much I had missed doing this and how good it felt to get my feet wet again.
What is pulling at you? What brings you joy? Where do you see a need that needs to be met in your world? How are you being called? Will you step out onto that path even if there’s uncertainty?
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