When I ask God what God is calling me to do, I usually think in terms of some all encompassing vocation. It sounds like I am asking for a job in one of the helping professions. Isn’t that what would really please God, what God secretly wants of me? Not really but it sure looks good on a resume.
I am aware that God does call some to ordained ministry, or to serving the poor ands the sick in very obvious and public ways. And there are the call stories in the Bible that can bring us envy. How special was Moses or Isaiah? And yet, before I get too envious, I’d better remember that their life didn’t get easier.
Another way to look at this call issue is to consider that maybe God is just calling me to respond to whatever is presented to me. That is what Walter Ciszek, a Jesuit priest who spent twenty-five years in Russia, many in the hard labor in Siberia, suggests in his book “He Leadeth Me”, which I quote from “The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything” by James Martin.
[God’s] will for us was the twenty-four hours of each day; the people, the places, the circumstances he set before us in that time. Those were the things God knew were important to him and to us at the moment, and those were the things upon which he wanted us to act, not out of any abstract principle or out of any subjective desire to “do the will of God.” No, these things, the twenty-four hours of this day, were his will; we had to learn to recognize his will in the reality of the situation.
This is what Jesus did. He saw what was needed and went right to it.
I am aware that God does call some to ordained ministry, or to serving the poor ands the sick in very obvious and public ways. And there are the call stories in the Bible that can bring us envy. How special was Moses or Isaiah? And yet, before I get too envious, I’d better remember that their life didn’t get easier.
Another way to look at this call issue is to consider that maybe God is just calling me to respond to whatever is presented to me. That is what Walter Ciszek, a Jesuit priest who spent twenty-five years in Russia, many in the hard labor in Siberia, suggests in his book “He Leadeth Me”, which I quote from “The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything” by James Martin.
[God’s] will for us was the twenty-four hours of each day; the people, the places, the circumstances he set before us in that time. Those were the things God knew were important to him and to us at the moment, and those were the things upon which he wanted us to act, not out of any abstract principle or out of any subjective desire to “do the will of God.” No, these things, the twenty-four hours of this day, were his will; we had to learn to recognize his will in the reality of the situation.
This is what Jesus did. He saw what was needed and went right to it.
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