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ID#92494

Dr. Chase

Senior Seminar

11 February 2021

What is Your Vocational Calling?

This is perhaps one of my least favorite questions because I know that I do not have

enough wisdom and humility as a twenty-two-year-old to answer it completely honestly. I

overcomplicate simple commands, doubt God’s love towards me and purpose for me, and

habitually rely on myself without recognizing how helpless I am. In fact, I think I would have

had a better answer to this question a decade ago when childlike faith was willing to listen, be

corrected, and step out into unknown waters. And I hope, at least, that ten years from now I will

have a better answer after God has matured me through time, experience, and suffering. Thus, I

feel like I am being asked this meaningful question at the worst time. But with faith ​smaller​ than

a mustard seed, here are my current scraps of an answer as I pray that the God of kindness and

grace will do with them more than I could ever ask or think.

In a broad sense, I look to verses in Scripture such as Matthew 22:37-39 in which Jesus

“sums up” all of the commandments into loving God and loving those around us. Looking at this

alone I can rest in the command/calling to love Him, allow myself to accept His love, and let that

love pour out onto others. For many of us, this may look like giving Him the “first fruits” or best

of our day to reading the Word, praying, journaling to Him, fasting, etc. It may include choosing

to be there for our crying roommate instead of finishing a paper. It may even mean looking at a

homeless man in his eyes to affirm his humanity whether we put money in his cup or not. The

beautiful and frustrating part about this broad answer, then, is that there is often not one specific
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response to apply to each day. As mentioned earlier, loving God and our neighbor best requires

the ​wisdom​ to let each day look different—to do your devotional time at night one day because

that’s when you’re the least distracted and do it in the morning another day because that’s when

you have the most time to give, to console your sad roommate one day and encourage her to

spend a few minutes in solitude, pouring her heart out to God in prayer, to give the homeless

man the five dollars in your pocket today and save it the next. And with it all, pursuing the

calling to love God and our neighbors means humbly acknowledging that we know so little, have

such a narrow perspective, and that this calling is about Him, not us.

On a more specific level, this question of vocation gets even harder to answer. Again, all

I have at this time in my life are scraps of ideas and tugs on my heart towards particular things

that I can’t seem to shake. The main of which is towards beauty. In the ​Weight of Glory​, C.S.

Lewis writes, ​“We do not want merely to see ​beauty​, though, God knows, even that is bounty

enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words — to be united with the

beauty​ we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it”

(1977, p. 42). Here Lewis puts into words the tug on my heart and the more specific vocational

calling that I believe God is calling me towards. For me, to love God and love others includes

loving beauty for its own sake. Not because it makes money, not because it bolsters an ego, and

not because it sounds like a nice thing for an artist to say, but because our Creator has made

things beautiful as a reflection of His own beauty. Therefore, when I see beauty in a single color,

in the scrunched nose of a random person as they tap their thumbs on their phones, in getting a

clearer understanding of a character in a story, or truly ​anything ​else, I am getting a glimpse of

the glory of God and relishing in the incredible things that He has made good. Simply put, this
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tug on my heart that I know comes from nothing other than the hand of God, since I cannot shake

it and I do not even fully understand it yet, is towards treasuring beauty for what it is.

To inadequately answer this daunting question of vocation and calling, then, is to say that

God has called me to many things. Yet in each, He has asked each of us to let our love belong to

Him first and through a relationship with Him, allow this love to be multiplied by His Spirit and

overflow onto those around us. There is no one right way to do this each day but what God has

been revealing to me recently is that I can pursue this calling by pursuing and rejoicing in beauty

for its own sake. I believe N. T. Wright sums all of this up perfectly when he writes, “We are

called to be genuine, image-bearing, God-reflecting, human beings. That works out in a million

ways, not least in a passion for justice and ​an eagerness to create and celebrate beauty

[emphasis mine]​”​ (2010, p. 71). As followers of Christ, our call is broad but praise God that we

get to be a part of a master plan which has a specific spot for each of us.
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References

Lewis, C. S., Routley, E., & Brilliant, A. (1977). ​The weight of glory.​ Unicorn Press.

Wright, N. T. (2010). ​After you believe: Why Christian character matters. ​HarperOne.