The Call

Os Guinness is an Irishmen and a sociologist.  He was a participant in L’Abri with the Schaeffers and later a reporter with the BBC.  In his book The Call he explores finding and fulfilling the central purpose of your life.  I recently purchased it for .50¢ at a thrift store and have been rewarded 1000 fold.  Here’s a portion:

“Calling is the truth that God calls us to himself so decisively that everything we are, everything we do, and everything we have is invested with a special devotion and dynamism lived out as a response to his summons and service.

“Our primary calling as followers of Christ is by him, to him, and for him.  First and foremost we are called to Someone (God), not to something (such as motherhood, politics, or teaching) or to somewhere (such as the inner city or Outer Mongolia).

“Our secondary calling, considering who God is as sovereign, is that everyone, everywhere, and in everything should think speak, live, and act entirely for him.  We can therefore properly say as a matter of secondary calling that we are called to homeschooling or to the practice of law or to art history.  But these and other things are always the secondary, never the primary calling.

“For those who live life as a journey and see faith as a journey, calling has an obvious implication.  It reminds us that we are all at different stages on the way and none of us alive has yet arrived.  Trouble comes when we forget this fact and pretend that life is static and settled, as if everything were a matter of sharp lines, clear boundaries, precise labels, and final assessments.  So that some are in, some out; some have arrived, others not.

“Are we saved by believing in Jesus or by trusting theologically correct formulations of believing in Jesus?  Are only creed-carry pillars of orthodoxy to be counted as true Christians?  Or should we expect to find that some of the followers that Christ loves most are as unlikely as the wise men from the East, the loose-living foreign woman at the well, or the centurion for the army of the hated occupying power?  Even the best and quickest disciples took three years of following Jesus to come close to seeing who he was.  And no sooner had they seen it than they misunderstood it and betrayed him.  Are we going to make the process simpler, surer, and more routine?

“Until Christ identifies and welcomes us home the disciples he has called, we his followers can expect to be as unfinished and unvarnished as we are unlikely–but we are on the road, and we are followers of the Way.”