Thinking about vocation, reminds me of the other, often discounted aspect of God’s call on our lives: our internal transformation. In light of this, I share some thoughts from one of my earliest posts.
When I fully embraced my Christian faith in my late teens, I expected to have God’s help in following the path of kindness, justice, and love for my fellow humans. What I didn’t expect was how much of the road would cover the landscape of my inner self.
It has been both fascinating and frustrating to me how much of my faith journey has revolved around me getting to understand myself better. On the one hand I accept that as my maker, God longs to share with me the intricacies of the nature built within me: to encourage me to develop my special gifts and to appreciate my amiable quirks. On the other hand, God keeps at me to uncover the roots of my foibles – understandably requiring a lot of hard and often painful digging. I have spent years sifting through my finds – sorting what is my guilt from the damage others have done to me. Part of me wondered, how is this making the world better if I have to be so focused on myself?
The answer I have received is that I have to know myself in order to become the person who can keep up treating my neighbor with love and respect. God isn’t interested in us going through the motions of good behavior. God wants us to become “new” people – sons and daughters who emulate their Parent in loving others, not because we have to, or are supposed to, but because it is our very nature to do so.
God works on us from the inside out, patiently but relentlessly showing us the truth about ourselves in order to heal our wounds (how others have hurt us) and retrain our less-than-loving impulses (how we hurt others).
So, while you keep mindful of what God calls you to do in this world, don’t miss out on the unexpected adventure of understanding your true self. God loves us as we are, but also yearns to guide us toward that greater version of ourselves that the Lord had in mind at our creation.
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