Lectio
“The Lord in his abundant generosity furnishes you with all manner of good things, not so as to spoil you, but to heal you and grow you and equip you, both in nature and in grace, for every good work to which you are destined.”
— Fr. Gregory Pine, Are You In Need Of Spiritual Direction?
Meditatio
Most of us spend our entire lives wondering what our purpose is — what our calling is. In hope of discovering who we are and why we are here, we move from purpose to purpose, desire to desire, and false identity to false identity. We create all manner of false idols out of our tastes, our relationships, our hobbies, and our careers, thinking that, if only we can align ourselves with the perfect outer trappings, our inner restlessness will be alleviated and our life will have purpose and meaning once and for all.
The problem is that we look in all of the wrong places for fulfillment, for purpose, and for meaning. Instead of listening for our calling, we try to create it or allow others to create it for us. But a calling is not something we can speak or act into truth or existence. A calling is not something we decide upon or create. It is something we hear and, therefore, something we must learn to listen for intently and attentively as if our lives depend upon it — because they do. Our calling is given to us — the good work to which we are destined. And our true calling is merely to listen for God’s calling.
We can choose to listen to our calling — which requires that we consult him who gave it to us — or we can choose to make our own way, to forge our own path, and to create our own purpose. The difference between these two choices is written across the lives of two kings of Israel: Saul and David.
Saul was a man who began with promise. Chosen by God, anointed by Samuel, given every advantage. But again and again, when the moment of decision came, Saul acted on his own judgment rather than consulting and waiting on the Lord. He offered the sacrifice himself rather than waiting for Samuel. He spared what God had told him to destroy. He consulted a medium when he could not hear God’s voice — rather than asking why he could not hear God’s voice. Each time, Saul substituted his own desires for God’s word, and each time, something was lost — until finally the kingdom itself was taken from him.
David was different — not because he was without sin, but because his instinct was always to first consult the Lord. Before every battle, before every major move, David inquired of the Lord. And the Lord answered, and David prevailed. His life, at its best, was a long practice of one orienting question — and his gravest failure came precisely when he stopped asking it. In the spring, when kings go out to war, David failed to consult the Lord and decided on his own to stay behind. And from that prideful lapse — that failure to consult, that failure to be where he was called to be — came adultery, deception, and murder. The man after God’s own heart had, for a season, stopped listening for God’s heart, and turned away from the very grace in which he had previously lived so faithfully.
The Lord does not call us to a life of our own making. He calls us to the life for which he made us — and he furnishes us with everything we need to live it. He heals what is broken in us, grows what is nascent in us, and equips us — in nature and in grace — for every good work to which we are destined. We see this most fully in Christ.
In the desert, he did not allow the identity being offered to him — by the enemy, by appetite, by the prospect of power — to override his divine purpose. Three times he was tempted to act out of a distorted or self-serving understanding of who he was, and three times he refused. And in the Garden of Gethsemane, he brought his whole self to the Father — his fear, his resistance, his desire for another way — but then, in spite of the suffering that lay ahead, he listened faithfully, and he consented humbly. Where Saul substituted his own desires and David stopped asking, Christ listened and he followed — and in so doing, showed us the way back to the Father — thy will, not mine be done. And the Father equipped him — through suffering, through death, through the very things that looked most like abandonment — for the work of love to which he had been destined by Love from before the foundation of the world.
Jesus’s life is the pattern of every faithful life. And so, when we are feeling confused, lonely, or impatient — when we are tempted to make our own way, to accept someone else’s, or to align our identity and our purpose to that which is finite, transitory, and will ultimately let us down — we need only return to the one question that orients everything else, the question that has always been at the heart of every faithful life: does this please the Lord?
And how we respond to the answer we receive will determine whether we live a life of freedom in our divine calling or in bondage to all that is not-God in rejection, denial, and refusal of that call. Blessed is the person who has heard God calling, who listens to that call, and who answers, saying, “Here am I. Send me.”
Oratio
so many desires
so many hopes and fears
my past pursues me
my future unclear
all of these distractions
fires, winds, and quakes
you call to me in silence
revealing your hidden face
in stillness you are found waiting
whispering your Word
I am left with but one question
does my life please the Lord?
Contemplatio
Where in your life are you insisting on your own self-defined calling rather than listening to the calling of the Lord?
Related Scripture
“For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.” — Ephesians 2:10 (NRSVCE)
For Further Reading
If you enjoyed this post, you may also like Did Not Our Hearts Burn: The Many Faces Of God, which explores how God draws near to us in the ordinary movements of our days — and how learning to recognize his presence is itself a practice of attentiveness to the calling he places on our lives.
Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity.
Wrestling With God.
Returning To Love.
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