Calling

Musings on Mary and the way God calls us

In my senior sem class, we've been talking about calling and vocation. It seems so simple when you're a kid. I told my parents I wanted to be an "artister or a cook". Now I'm graduating college with a degree in Christian Education Ministry and I can't help wondering about the other versions of my life in which I majored in Economics or Chemistry.

As I've thought about calling, I've been dwelling on God's call of Mary. How he chose her and blessed her. The first words the angel Gabriel says to Mary is "Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you" (Luke 1:28). Reading through this passage again, it struck me that Mary's calling started with God. It started with God saying "I am pleased with my daughter and I will remain by her side". From there, God continues to call Mary to be the mother of His Son.

So often, I skip ahead to the calling, to carry Christ, that I miss the first message: you are my own and I am pleased with you.

I think when it comes to ministry, it's easy to determine our calling: to serve God through children's ministry in a church setting. But how often do we stop and sit in the reality of being the child of God? How often do we sit and remember that before we had a calling, a vocation, a career, we were identified as being Christ's own?

I envision my vocation to end up being many things. I imagine I'll work in many different settings doing a variety of different jobs. Some labeled ministerial, some not. But I hope that in whatever I end up doing, whatever job I land in, that my focus is to remember that the Lord is with me. He walks with me and the Spirit dwells in me wherever I go.

The closer I get to graduation, the less certain I am about my career path and my vocation. And it sounds cheesy, but I think the closest thing to a vocation that I have is to walk humbly with the Lord. I hope to gather a posture like Mary, where she says YES to impossible, improbably, unlikely things. For God will call and I hope to answer boldly, trusting his call and answering back in obedient faith.