If you got to choose, how would you like to live your life? Are there routines you’d like to have? Do you have guiding principles to help you keep first things first? Brother Lawrence created his Rule in the 1500s. Several years ago, I began mine.
Flourishing in Our Calling
Discerning Your Personal Call
I knew Kevin was called to be a pastor. And I fully embraced my role as the pastor’s wife. But I didn’t think I had received a call. I didn’t think volunteering was a “calling” because it was not a paid, full-time job. I guess I equated calling with a vocation—a job. I had a more general call: all people are called to love the Lord, love others, and do their part to share the gospel, disciple people, and seek to advance God’s mission in the world. But I didn’t have a special, specific call.
But what if discerning our calling is a spiritual formation conversation God invites us to have with him during the various seasons of our lives?
Watch
I watch the news and listen to the stories of the pandemic and feel the heartbreak of so many people here and around the world, I am so sad. I'm just holding my breath for the people in refugee camps and for the people in India, as well as the people who are losing loved ones and suffering with this virus here in the U.S. Sadness upon sadness. It is truly unbelievable to watch this modern-day plague unfold.
I heard Gov. Cuomo say yesterday that it's like we're stuck in a bad version of the movie, Ground Hog Day. Isn't that the truth. Every morning we get up to do it all over again.
For me, coming up with explanations for why God is allowing this, or postulating on how it will be beneficial, is not helpful. At this point, I just want to draw near to the Lord in silence and sorrow and ask for help.
This week as part of my Lenten devotions, I've been reflecting on Jesus' last 24 hours and the invitation that I'm hearing from him comes from the first part of his mandate to Peter, James and John. "Watch and pray..." And I've been wondering what they were to watch...was Jesus asking them to watch for strangers coming into the Garden, was he asking them to watch for Judas and the 600 soldiers? Perhaps. But my hunch is that the approach of 600 soldiers with the light of their torches and the sounds of their boots marching across the Kedron Valley would have been obvious. So perhaps he wanted them to watch for something else.
As I pondered this, the Lord’s invitation to me, is to watch him…watch Jesus wrestle with the Father in the Garden...watch. Part of my watching involved trying to watercolor what I imagined…a form of Visio Divina.
So I've been watching him (in part in the Word and in part through painting and looking at art) and what has been standing out for me is that I am watching Jesus trusting his Father. He knew the character of the Father. All of the truths of theology are the truths that Jesus knew. He was anchored to them...and as we watch him agonize in prayer we see what it looks like to be grounded in truth, the truth of who our God is. When we know God, then we can fully put our hope in him and stand firm when everything around us is falling apart. I think that the invitation to me is to know the Father's goodness and sovereignty and love the way Jesus knew it, so that as I watch him wrestle to the ground all that was going on within him, I can learn from him how to find my peace in the middle of the storm.
Dwell with Me
Moses begins his psalm, "Lord, you have been our dwelling place throughout all generations..." Moses did not say that he lived in the palace in Egypt, nor the backcountry of Arabia, nor the desert and crags of Sinai, but the Lord was his dwelling place. It seems that if I could learn a little bit about what it means to dwell with the Lord, then I wouldn't get so tossed about in the turbulence of life.