What is my calling?

In Centuries of Meditations, Thomas Treherne writes,

When you love men, the world quickly becometh yours: and yourself become a greater treasure than the world is. For all their persons are your treasures, and all the things in Heaven and Earth that serve them, are yours. For those are the riches of Love, which minister to its Object. (II.64)

As I’ve tried to discern God’s will for my life, I’ve rarely found myself satisfied with the beginning of Treherne’s answer, which is also the summary of the law: “love men.” But that’s just the beginning of Treherne’s answer.

When I was 11 years old, my parents’ washer and dryer broke down the week after the warranty expired, so they shut themselves up all day in the laundry room trying to resuscitate the stubborn machines. By what must have been the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, my brother and I decided to sneak through my mom’s cookbook collection and try our hands at making fettuccine carbonara. It meant we had to look fancy words up in the dictionary, like “simmer.” But we pulled it off! I’ll never forget my parents’ stunned gratitude.

That’s what Treherne is getting at in his meditation. When my brother and I loved our parents, we saw all of our ‘stuff’ as a way to serve them. The chef, stay-at-home-parent, and restauranteur, all share a twofold vocation: first, loving men; and second, gathering up the praises of creation, uncovering and sharing God’s embedded designs for delicious and beautiful food.

I think all of our vocations follow the same twofold pattern: first, love men; second, explore your inventory of gifts, talents, insights, relationships, and experiences, to see what you have to give.

While this idea coheres with general humanistic sentiments, I think we are given a more concentrated vision of ‘vocation’ in redemptive history.

In the history of redemption, God elected Abraham to be a blessing to the nations, and he was promised a plot of land in which his family would do it. These people, redeemed from slavery by the LORD, were called to serve a new master as a ‘kingdom of priests.’ They were to bless the world as both kings and priests: through moral and religious obedience. But to this call from God, Israel, like everyone in Adam, said ‘No.’ Only one man, the man Jesus Christ, responded ‘Yes’ to God’s call, faithfully fulfilling the vocation of man. Jesus collapsed the moral and the religious laws into one: by love, he lived his life as a sacrifice on behalf of and for the life of the world.

The body of Christ, elect from every nation, is called to follow their head as, what in Every Good Endeavor, Tim Keller calls “a living-slain thing.” Christian vocation is the giving up of one’s own life in obedience to God for the life of the world.