Did you want to be a farmer?! Hi Reader, Welcome to Living Contentment – your weekly nudge towards a life of deep, true Biblical contentment. We’re continuing our series on sources of discontentment, today looking at the discontentment that comes from feeling like you missed your calling in life. READ THIS Imagine this situation, which plays out every day on the hills around us. A young child gathers firewood or fetches water. Getting older they’ll graze the family’s three goats if they’re a boy, or tend to younger siblings if they’re a girl. They help with tilling, planting, and harvesting the family field. As they age, they find someone from not too far away to marry. They build a small house of mud bricks and hopefully acquire a small plot of land to grow food to eat, and maybe some extra to sell. They have children. The cycle repeats.
What does God “want them to do” with their lives? What are they being “called” to do? What “should” they do with their lives? Often the core of our concern for “what should I do” is a sense that we have a very specific and direct calling, usually associated with our career. We approach this quite differently from many Biblical perspectives on “what should you do with your life?” “Act Justly, love mercy, walk humbly with God”
-The Prophet Micah
“…break the chains of injustice, get rid of exploitation in the workplace, free the oppressed, cancel debts…. share your food with the hungry, inviting the homeless poor into your homes, putting clothes on the shivering ill-clad, being available to your own families.” -The Prophet Isiah “Love God. Love others.” -Jesus
“Yes fine, but what about ‘my calling’ – the thing/job/role I’m supposed to do? ” We’ve allowed a concept unique to modern, wealthy societies to creep into our view of God’s calling when we think this way. In places like rural Burundi, if your father is a farmer (whose farm is smaller than your garage) you will also certainly be a farmer. This doesn’t negate that many of these people wish they (or their kids) could be something else. However, we forget that for most of human history, the idea of choosing your own vocation was unthinkable. If you are a coffee farmer because your father was a coffee farmer, is there any sense in questioning whether God wants you to be a coffee farmer? Maybe you ‘should’ have been a teacher? But if that was never an option, is there any point in agonizing over what never was and never will be?
Why then do those of us with the privilege of exercising so much influence over our ‘work’, feel like we only have one ‘right’ choice to make? We think if we pick the wrong thing, God is not pleased, or at least disappointed. Let’s start to view our ‘life’s calling’ as being an apprentice of Jesus, first and foremost. Then where we live, what we do for a job, and what our home life is like – are all secondary issues. In reality – at best a distant second. If we are called to love others, we can do that in any situation. We can do that as a stay-at-home parent, as an unemployed student, as a music teacher, as an aeronautics engineer, or as a bus driver. If you find yourself any place there are humans around, you have a calling right in front of you. Whether it’s your children, co-workers, neighbors, classmates, that guy who eats lunch at your table or that woman who sits next to you on the commuter train every day. Wherever there are people, there are hurts to be shared, and stories to be heard. There are ways we can help, or at least things we can do to show love. “A new commandment I give to you: love one another.” That’s Jesus calling for those who want to be his apprentices. And the beauty is that it’s completely independent of any work or life situation. We shouldn’t lose contentment because we think we have missed our calling – as long as we have people that we can try to love.
DO THIS Reflect on the following verses {taken from The Message version}: Matthew 22:37-39
“Teacher, which command in God’s Law is the most important?” Jesus said, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence.’ This is the most important, the first on any list. But there is a second to set alongside it: ‘Love others as well as you love yourself.’
1 Timothy 1:5
The whole point of what we’re urging is simply love – love uncontaminated by self-interest and counterfeit faith, a life open to God
Micah 6:8
But he’s already made it plain how to live, what to do, what God is looking for in men and women. It’s quite simple: Do what is fair and just to your neighbor, be compassionate and loyal in your love, And don’t take yourself too seriously – take God seriously.
What do these say to you about your ‘calling’ – what you should be doing?
PRAY THIS Forgive us Lord for waiting to hear from you, Amen Talk to you next Thursday! ~George |
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