“...I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received.”
– EPHESIANS 4:1

People talk about “knowing their calling”, “discovering their calling,” or “living out their calling” all the time. Whenever we’re dissatisfied with our lives (particularly, with our jobs) we start questioning whether or not we were called to life as it is. It seems like people who live within the rough framework of that semi-illusive idea are few and far between. For a lot of us, we wish we knew what that felt like. People who talk about that kind of life exude the kind of confidence, generosity, beauty, and comfort within their own skin, we long for. In many respects, we imagine that a clear sense of our calling will answer for us the deeper questions of our lives. We assume that the massively successful — the geniuses, the flourishing, the conquerors, and the champions must know more about calling than we do. As recently as last Sunday we could see how NBC played upon this notion during their Olympics broadcast.

Even though the Olympics have quickly made the transition out of our consciousness (except, perhaps for the ongoing Ryan-Lochte-lying-about-being-held-up-saga), I was reminded today of a soundbite on the subject of calling from the Rio games. I remembered that somewhere in the midst of the media frenzy preceding and surrounding America’s most famous Olympians, an athlete said something that stuck. It came in one of the emotion-laden backstories aired in the pre-competition moments between commercial breaks and before the introduction of the competitors. Somewhere between the home video footage of young aspiration and nascent athletic dominance, and over the rich instrumentals, the much-heralded Kerri Walsh-Jennings, offered this succinct declaration of a calling: “I feel like I was born to have babies and play volleyball.” She didn’t use the word “calling,” but the impact is the same: “I was born to…”

Kerri believes that the more she lives her life within the scope of those two things (volleyball and being a mother), the more “Kerri” she’ll become. What she’s actually saying then, is that there is an overlap between the identity behind a particular calling and the actions which authenticate it — the one always requires the other. It’s easy for us to get this one wrong. Sometimes we’ll try to create activity pretending or wanting it to be “who we are.” Other times, we’ll declare a fresh, epiphanal affirmation of who God has created us to be, without any supporting evidence of action, eventually wondering why it doesn’t seem to fit right.

This Sunday, we’ll take a look at the idea of calling. While, the longview of calling may be somewhat individual and specific, we may also discover that it is something held collectively among us. So, though we won’t answer every question about every aspect of the issue, we’ll step into and see where God leads us.

See you Sunday,

Jeff