Frederick Buechner said that your vocation is where your deep gladness meets the world’s deep hunger.
Vocation – with the same root as “voice” – is about a person’s calling, and the concept that God, the mystery at the heart of all creation, calls and invites you to take on some of God’s mission for the world.
It’s not always about hearing voices.
Somewhere in his sermon, the preacher said a word: “esoteric.” The word itself isn’t important. It’s the sort of word you might have in your vocabulary, or you might not. But the preacher said it. And he said it strictly to impress the people. Then he leaned out over the pulpit, peered knowingly over the top of his glasses at the congregation, and continued, “if you know what I mean.”
My grandpa and grandma Stanton were sitting there. And they did know what the word meant. And they also knew that the preacher had seriously mispronounced it.
As I remember the story, this was the specific point at which my grandpa Stanton recognized his call to pastoral ministry. Not a voice-of-God-in-the-night calling, but a realization – reinforced by my grandma’s elbowing him – that he could do better than that pretentious parson holding forth in their church’s pulpit every Sunday.
For me, it was more like dawn. There’s a time when it’s definitely not day yet, and there’s a time when it is. But there’s no particular point where you can say, that was the moment when it became day. Vocation, for me, was a gradual recognition that it was the Church and its mission that I would serve, that the Church is my people.
Vocation isn’t just for pastors & ordained ministers. God calls everybody to live a life of service and mission. Sometimes our vocation is linked-in with our employment. Sometimes our employment is for the purpose of keeping food on the table and roof over our head, but the place we use our unique gifts & find our own deep joys and meet the world’s deep need is elsewhere in our life – at the Library, for some of you, or in caring for some of the most vulnerable among us.
Your vocation doesn’t always stay the same. When you accomplish a mission, you go on to another. When situations change, God’s mission may need a change of course. When you retire, you may be making a radical change in how you take part in God’s mission … but you don’t retire to the spectator section. You’re still part of God’s purposes, always.
Tell me about your vocation. How does your deep gladness meet the world’s deep hunger? Or, if it hasn’t dawned for you just yet, let’s visit about that. Discerning a new vocation sometimes takes time, sometimes takes a listening ear and an encouraging word. But rest assured: day is coming.
Love,
Wes
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