An acquaintance recently asked a bunch of people for what they thought the term 'calling' meant, since this person had been hearing the word used to describe a lot of very different things. And there were, of course, a lot of different opinions. After typing out my thoughts, I wanted to share the longer version of them since it helped me so much to write it out, and hopefully it can help someone else as well.
A person's calling, I believe, is something that is discovered and refined and unpacked over a lifetime -- not something you can just wake up one morning and realize.
It's like seeing a range of mountains from a very, very long way off; when you first notice them, they don't seem all that important, just a little seam of ridges on the horizon. But they intrigue you, and as you move that way a little to get a better view, you notice spots and swirls of color you hadn't seen before. That makes you wonder what those peaks might be like, what's growing there so far away, and you move a bit closer. Then you can see that there are actually lush green hills spreading out in front of the mountains, dusted with a faint color that can only be wildflowers. And what's winding between the hills...?
Yes, traveling closer you see a river, spilling over the lower heights and into an unseen valley. A little closer, and you realize there's not only one range of mountains, but several, each higher and more awesome than the one before.
Closer and you can see eagles wheeling over the near ones, and snowy caps on the farther, towering stone faces. Closer still and you're among the hills, and you can see a heard of some wild mountain animal, flocking like a shadow on a distant slope. And as you keep moving higher, deeper, further into the range, you continue to uncover more and more you would never have known or guessed from far away.
In the same way, I learned and pursued things I was fascinated by when I was little, and tried to make sense of them in my early teens, and tried to fit them into a career in high school -- guessing I'd have to be something like a history teacher, though that excluded so many of my other, bigger passions. But writing and costuming continued to open up, I still loved dancing. And then filmmaking began to take shape for me, and I started to realize what I believe is the other half of the 'calling' equation;
A calling is also not simply a vocation, but more of a 'who' you are made to be, and what makes you as a no-one-else-quite-like-you individual come alive despite any current circumstances. I'm not just a costumer, or a dancer, or a writer, or a filmmaker. As far as I've learned at this stage in my life, I am a storyteller. Particularly, a storyteller who is to impart wonder in everything I do. My vocation, however that may change over the years is just the means by which I'm fulfilling my calling at a given time. God sometimes changes my vocations and certainly my understanding as He draws me "further up and further in" in refining my own exact calling, which, ultimately, is the "skin" that's spread over the support of knowing Him and making Him known. (which includes proclaiming the Gospel/carrying out the Great Commission.)
If your calling was your vocation/job, then if you loose or leave that job, that would mean you were no longer in God's calling for you, and therefore, no longer in His will, which doesn't work in the very real world we cannot control in which our God allows us to continue until His timing is complete. We know He is not setting us up to fail like that, so the argument of your job being the same as your calling falls flat. (Though of course you may from time to time have jobs that incorporate so much of your calling that they almost blend into it, and feel nearly like the same thing.)
Also, if we were to say that the Great Commission (to go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every nation, as we're commanded in Scripture) is a person's calling, and not instead a command and essentially the purpose humanity is to accomplish on the earth, then we take away personal responsibility to carry out that very, very important Commission in anything other than eventually a mundane, non-winsome way, having no reason to come up with impactful, thought-provoking ways to share such vital news we don't want our hearers to ignore or miss. I don't think we can raise a personal calling to being the same magnitude as the Great Commission. They (calling and human purpose) are both vitally important facets to our being a whole human being, but are not the same thing.
And that perspective that jobs/vocations are not the same as our personal calling, really changes how we should think about jobs as well; not as something we're 'stuck' in just to make a paycheck, but as a tool you are using for the time being as a means (or one of several means) to carry out something of your calling that makes you you -- the tool to spread the pallet of colors you personally have been given to paint onto where you have been placed in the story of history.
So do you think you have a pretty good idea what your calling is? Has it changed much over the years, as you've gotten 'closer' to it and deciphered more of what it really looks like? Have you seen it crossing over into your human purpose (to know God and make Him known)?
(AS ALWAYS: All pictures belong to their original owners and are shown here only for inspiration. I am not trying to steal or take credit for anyone's pictures.)
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