vocation

some thoughts on vocation.
First, Frederick Buechner:
"The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet"


Now, for some Thomas Merton. These quotes can all be found in the book No Man is an Island (which I would highly recommend) on pages 131--163, "Vocation."

For each of us, there is only one thing necessary: to fufull our own destiny, according to God's will, to be what God wants us to be.

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In any case, our destiny is the work of two wills, not one. It is not an immutable fate, forced upon us without any choice of our own, by a divinity without heart.

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In planning the course of our lives, we must remember the importance and the dignity of our own freedom. A man who fears to settle his future by a good act of his own free choice does not understand the love of God. For our freedom is a gift God has given us in order that He may be able to love us more perfectly, and be loved by us more perfectly in return. (underlining mine)

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Perfectly confident of being loved by God, the soul that loves Him dares to make a choice of its own, knowing that its own choice will be acceptable to love.

And at the same time, pure love is prudent. It is enlightened with a clear-sighted discretion. Trained in freedom, it knows how to avoid the selfishness that frustrates its action. It sees obstacles and avoids or overcomes them. It is keenly sensitive to the smallest signs of God's will and good pleasure in the circumstances of its own life, and its freedom is conditioned by the knowledge of all of these. Therefore, in choosing what will please God, it takes account all of the slightest indications of His will. Yet if we add all these indeications together, they seldom suffice to give us absolute certaintude that God wills one thing to the exclusion of every other. He Who loves us means by this to leave us room for our own freedom, so that we may dare to choose for ourselves, with no other certainty than that His love will be pleased by our intention to please Him.

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Every man has a vocation to be someone: but he must understand clearly that in order to fulfill this vocation he can only be one person: himself.

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It remains for us to take up courageously and without hesitation the work He has given us, which is the task of living our own life as Christ would live it in us.

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Our individual vocation is our opportunity to find that one place in which we can most perfectly receive the benefits of divine mercy, and know God's love for us, and reply to His love with our whole being.

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We know when we are following our vocation when our soul is set free from preoccupation with itself and is able to seek God and even to find Him, even though it may not appear to find Him. Gratitude and confidence and freedom from ourselves: these are signs that we have found our vocation and are living up to it even though everything else may seem to have gone wrong. They give us peace in any suffering. They teach us to laugh at despair. And we may have to.

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We would be better to able to understand the beauty of the religious vocation if we remembered that marriage too is a vocation.

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All vocations are intended by God to manifest His love in the world. For each special calling gives a man some particular place in the Mystery of Christ, gives him something to do for the salvation of all mankind. The difference between the various vocations lies in the different ways in which one enables men to discover God's love, appreciate it, respond to it, and share it with other men. Each vocation has for its aim the propagation of divine life in the world.

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The one thing that really decides a vocation is the ability to make a firm decision to embrace a certain state of life and to act on that decision.

If a person can never make up his mind, never firmly resolve to do what is demanded in order to follow a vocation, one can say that in all probability he has not received the vocation. The vocation may have been offered him: but that is something no one can decide with certainty. Whether or not he is resisting grace, the fact seems to be that he is "not called." But a calm and definite decision that is not deterred by obstacles and not broken by opposition is a good sign that God has given His grace to answer His call, and that he has corresponded to it.

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He must decide himself, since his own decision is the expression of his vocation. If he then applies for admission to a seminary or monastary, and if his application is accepted, he can say that he probably "has a vocation."

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I just wanted to share those quotes with you, and I hope that you have some time to read them carefully and take them to heart, as I have learned to.

If you know me at all, you know that I have a strong sense of vocation in my life. I know where it is that I am compelled and what it is that I love to do. It wasn't always that way; for a long time growing up I struggled with "not having a vocation" in the sense that I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life!

But things changed, even though it started small. Believe it or not, it was simply a school trip to the East Coast that taught me what my inner voice sounded like. I longed to go on this particular weeklong trip, and doubted my folks would say yes. But they did! And the money and everything worked out just fine.

It happened again, when I wanted to go on Royal Servants. There again was that deep longing in my heart to go, to see something of the world and serve like that, and again I doubted it was possible-- This time especially since it was very expensive and my dad's health was progressively worse. BUT I went! Everything came together, and God blessed me immensely.

I've seen it happen again and again, since, from things that have happened at Calvin College (like getting on the Dean's List!), with my relationship with my ex, to most recently my semester abroad. All of these things might be deemed impossible from any worldly standards, but I've learned first hand that the genuine desires in my heart are put there by God, and that it is only by His outstanding and incredible GRACE that I can achieve these things!!

That's why, when there are so many decisions in front of me (such as for next year) I don't focus on "what God wants me to do"... He knows my heart and all of these opportunities are good and healthy, and I would grow and develop leadership skills in every single one of them. Rather, I look inside of my heart, and I think critically about what would be most appropriate, what I would enjoy but be challenged by, and even consider practically about what would fit into my schedule and so on. God fills in the gaps once I've made the decision and trusted Him with the rest.

And--if I should have been mistaken, or He's about to teach me something--there's always the chance that my application wouldn't go through or that it didn't work out. But do you know what I know this means? There's better in store!

It breaks my heart when people are afraid to chase after the things they love through their vocations. It hurts me to see them limiting themselves when God's resources are infinitely available to help them do whatever they dream. Please, oh please, dare to choose for yourself, whithin the freedom and grace that God gives so generously!


Love,
Betsy Joy