True confessions: I’m jealous of E. Stanley Jones. The 20th century missionary and theologian wrote this of his experience after finishing college:
Fifty years later I knelt before a chair in that same room and thanked God for the guidance and for the years spent working out that guidance.”
(from The Word Became Flesh, 1963)
Amazing, isn’t it, to have such a clear and specific sense of direction. I don't know about you, but that hasn’t been typical of my own faith journey. Acht, I’m still trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up! (she says, admitting that her time since college can be measured in decades and not simply years).
I can rule out at least a few possibilities: the medical I’m-About-To-Faint profession, stock car I-Hate-Loud-Noises racing, and professional Which-One-Is-My-Right-Hand? athletics. Other than that, I’m still waiting for something akin to Jones’ lightening bolt moment of clarity.
The more I think about it, though, the more I realize that there’s a whole bunch of life and living that I *do* know how should be lived. All I have to do is open to any page of the Holy Love Letter to discover the type of life for which I was designed, and through which I will find deepest contentment and meaning. It is a call to be faithful in everyday moments, to live deeply, to love fully.
As Paul wrote to a group of new believers:
Nothing grand, nothing glamorous. Just up-to-the-elbows faithfulness.
And perhaps that’s precisely the type of life into which Holy Whispers are most easily heard. That when we face a crossroads, or need to chart a new direction, or take a leap of faith, our ears will already be trained by faithfulness to hear ~ and respond ~ accordingly.
If so, perhaps I should be less concerned with “What should I do with my life?” and more attentive to the question of “How should I live the moments of Today?” It seems that in God’s economy, the two go hand in hand.
Simple clarity. May it be so.
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