I read this morning that just like God made each flower with it’s own ‘personality’–shape, color, texture, habitat–He made each of us unique yet doesn’t want us to stand alone. He wants to place us with others to create a stunning ‘bouquet.’ So the question came to me, where do I fit? What am I called to do with my life and where? I think this question of vocation is one that many struggle with.
Perhaps my views of vocation are mistaken, leading me to miss my true vocation and the fact that I am already walking in it. I tend to think of vocation as one specific thing I will be called to do for the rest of my life, or at least for a long period. I tend to see it as an exterior ministry to others that I am fulfilling. I tend to see it as something I discover God has gifted me for and that in doing I find fulfillment and joy. But when I look at Jesus’ earthly life, I’m not sure I see this pattern.
Jesus spent most of his thirty years of his life in obscurity in His hometown of Nazareth working at a carpenter’s trade. Was this His vocation? Then he wandered around preaching, healing and being with his followers for nearly three years. Was that His vocation? His greatest achievement in terms of impact was His death and resurrection setting us free from sin and death. Was that His vocation? Or were they all His vocations for those specific periods of His life? At one point He said his food was to do the will of God (John 4:34). Another time He said, “the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing; for whatever He does, that the Son does likewise.” Did Jesus think about vocation or did He just listen to God and follow the Spirit? And did He find joy in it or great sorrow, or a mixture of both? Several times He expressed exasperation with His disciples for their cluelessness. Neither did He find joy in every aspect of His ministry, though He did have expectations of future joy: “...for the joy that was set before Him [He] endured the cross,” And the most important question I can ponder is whether vocation something I am called to do or someone I am called to be. Jesus was the Beloved Son of God. Is His life defined by what He did or by who He was which was expressed in what He did?
As Catherine Doherty looking back on her life in her 77th year she realized that, though this activity and that activity she tried eventually failed, all the time she was walking in her true vocation which was really an interior one. In leaving her native Russia after the Revolution and coming as a refugee to Canada, living in a foreign land, speaking a foreign language, learning foreign ways, she was living her true vocation of being a poustinik, a desert dweller, a vocation of solitude, silence and prayer, a vocation of loneliness and sharing in the loneliness of God. She lived out this vocation in various places and various stages of her life. She didn’t even realize she was living it for she thought she was always seeking it. In seeking to follow God, to do His will, she was unknowingly living her vocation, being and becoming who God designed her to be, fitting into the bouquet of His body through her ministry of prayer, teaching and identifying with the poor as God led her.
I imagine I’ll keep stumbling over the question of vocation because I do so every so often. But when I do, God usually reminds me that in living in relationship with Him, in seeking to do His will, in allowing who He made me to be to blossom, I will walk in my calling contributing my uniqueness to His bouquet, perhaps without really knowing it.
July 14, 2009
Perhaps my views of vocation are mistaken, leading me to miss my true vocation and the fact that I am already walking in it. I tend to think of vocation as one specific thing I will be called to do for the rest of my life, or at least for a long period. I tend to see it as an exterior ministry to others that I am fulfilling. I tend to see it as something I discover God has gifted me for and that in doing I find fulfillment and joy. But when I look at Jesus’ earthly life, I’m not sure I see this pattern.
Jesus spent most of his thirty years of his life in obscurity in His hometown of Nazareth working at a carpenter’s trade. Was this His vocation? Then he wandered around preaching, healing and being with his followers for nearly three years. Was that His vocation? His greatest achievement in terms of impact was His death and resurrection setting us free from sin and death. Was that His vocation? Or were they all His vocations for those specific periods of His life? At one point He said his food was to do the will of God (John 4:34). Another time He said, “the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing; for whatever He does, that the Son does likewise.” Did Jesus think about vocation or did He just listen to God and follow the Spirit? And did He find joy in it or great sorrow, or a mixture of both? Several times He expressed exasperation with His disciples for their cluelessness. Neither did He find joy in every aspect of His ministry, though He did have expectations of future joy: “...for the joy that was set before Him [He] endured the cross,” And the most important question I can ponder is whether vocation something I am called to do or someone I am called to be. Jesus was the Beloved Son of God. Is His life defined by what He did or by who He was which was expressed in what He did?
As Catherine Doherty looking back on her life in her 77th year she realized that, though this activity and that activity she tried eventually failed, all the time she was walking in her true vocation which was really an interior one. In leaving her native Russia after the Revolution and coming as a refugee to Canada, living in a foreign land, speaking a foreign language, learning foreign ways, she was living her true vocation of being a poustinik, a desert dweller, a vocation of solitude, silence and prayer, a vocation of loneliness and sharing in the loneliness of God. She lived out this vocation in various places and various stages of her life. She didn’t even realize she was living it for she thought she was always seeking it. In seeking to follow God, to do His will, she was unknowingly living her vocation, being and becoming who God designed her to be, fitting into the bouquet of His body through her ministry of prayer, teaching and identifying with the poor as God led her.
I imagine I’ll keep stumbling over the question of vocation because I do so every so often. But when I do, God usually reminds me that in living in relationship with Him, in seeking to do His will, in allowing who He made me to be to blossom, I will walk in my calling contributing my uniqueness to His bouquet, perhaps without really knowing it.
July 14, 2009
