I am currently traveling from Pennsylvania back to Maine. In just a few minutes, I will enter the van and drive, drive, drive. I am trying to achieve 200 blog posts in my first year, so I do not have the luxury of not posting this week. I am reposting an important blog about calling and purpose. For some reason, most likely the day of the week it was posted, this post did not get many hits. Well, here it is again!
Deep in our hearts, we all want to find and fulfill a purpose bigger than ourselves. Only such a larger purpose can inspire us to heights we know we could never reach on our own. For each of us the real purpose is personal and passionate: to know what we are here to do and why. Kierkegaard wrote in his Journal: "The thing is to understand myself, to see what God really wants me to do; the thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die.
Os Guinness, The Call: Finding and Fulfilling the Central Purpose of Your Life, 3.
Today I wish to change direction a bit in this blog. I have encountered many people in the last year who just "do not know what they want to be when they grow up." Unfortunately, many of these folks are in the 30s, 40s, and 50s! I also have met some in the 60s and 70s who wish to live life over because they feel they missed their calling.
What is calling? Guinness defines it as "the greatest good (summum bonum), the ultimate end, the meaning of life, or whatever you choose." (2) I would say it is the nagging understanding that all of us are made for a special purpose. I believe deep down all of us feel this nagging understanding. All of us know we are made for some purpose.
Unfortunately, most of us have no idea what that purpose should be!
So we search and try different things. Some just fall into a fulfilling occupation and life. Others settle into a job or occupation but live for the weekends when they can escape their job. Others drift along through life fearful of missing their calling if they settle into any job of occupation.
Some give up. In fact, the folks who despair of finding something bigger are a growing segment of American society. How can you recognize them? Guinness comments about these folks using an analogy from Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov.
"For the secret of man's being is not only to live... but to live for something definite. Without a firm notion of what he is living for, man will not accept life and will rather destroy himself than remain on earth." (2)
Folks that believe their current life is all there is destroy themselves through their behavior and beliefs. They live for the moment, for their pleasure, and without purpose. Others despair and fall into great depression and anxiety.
Let's not be these folks! We were called to so much more!
Calling is beyond our job or occupation. Hopefully our current job or occupation help us fulfill our call, but sometimes they do not. In fact, I have had tons of jobs. Many I could not wait to quit. Yet, they all helped me fulfill my calling by providing money and experience.
Calling is the key to living a fulfilling life. It goes beyond "success" as described by our world system. It is holy and beautiful. It is the special shape or leading of God to each of us.
Lord willing I will have the time, energy and focus in the next couple of weeks to write about this topic!
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