What You Might Not Know About Your Calling

Each of us is called to be someone and to do things – it is part of human existence – and discovering these things is a life-long process of growth and change. For Christians, the word “calling” has biblical implications. Over the years and in my own life and understanding, christian culture has attached differing implications to the word “vocation.” The original meaning of “vocation”is defined as work that calls us to connect our God-given gifts and passions with God’s activity in the world. A vocation is a calling that merges our mission in life with God’s mission on earth. As Frederick Buechner puts it.

“The place God calls you is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”

That intersecting point is your calling, your vocation.

Vocation and calling are literally the same words, one Latin and one Greek, and mean the deeper, longer story of one’s life, the commitments and passions, the gifts and skills, the loves and longings that make us “us.” Occupation is different. This describes the particular relationships and responsibilities along the way of life that we “occupy” as our vocations and callings are deepened and clarified.

In the now, but not yet world that we live, there is always discord between what we feel we were “made for,” and what we do day by day. In everyone’s life there is this lack of harmony. “It cannot not be.” “But wait…I have been this! Now I am this!” “And yet I can no longer do this…. so then, who am I?”