Calling

Is there room in our lives for a calling?

Do our lives have unique purposes, directions, paths?  Has God ordained for us each a road?  A road that we can take--or not.  But, nonetheless, a road that is for us only?


I think so.


God does place callings on our lives.  Callings to specific things and places and people and lives.  Our callings come from the deepest parts of who we are and what we're like.  But that's not all a calling is.  A calling is God reaching out to us, meeting us (and all of our goals, dreams, passions, experiences) and merging His direction with our own.

A calling is...most obviously....God calling the best parts of us out for Himself.  God saying, "Yes, I created that wonderful talent/passion/gift in you and now you have the choice to give it back to me and see what we can really do with it.

Weren't the disciples ones who were called?  Isn't that what happened to them?  They had lives they were leading.  Good lives.  Decent lives.  Important lives.  But God called them.  He called them to stop doing what they were doing for themselves, and begin doing what they were doing for Him.  The fishermen became fishers of men.  Their skills, their talents, their very lives plucked up and redirected.  Called.

I worry a bit about all of us, though.  I fear that our lives, while decent, good, fruitful, even Godly, have left no room for a calling.  We are planners.  At least, the ones of us that I know are.  We have a plan for the month, year, and next several seasons of life, and we are doing everything we can to keep ourselves on track to accomplish our goals.  We do this because this makes sense and we want to be successful and happy and not wind up somewhere in a dead end job with a house in foreclosure and zero prospects of retirement.  I get it.  We'd be dumb to do anything else.

But if we were called, really, called.  What would we do?

Would we be willing to even consider reconsidering?  Our plans, so nicely laid and waiting for us to grow into them--would we think of abandoning them?

If God broke in and said: Stop.  Not that way.  This way.  ---would we follow?

Because I believe that not only could this happen, but it does happen.  It is  happening.  Daily.  To all of us.

We are being called.  To something, toward something.

Question is: will we answer?