Call me

Here's the thing about finding your calling. It seems like to really reach convergence, or afterglow, you need to be called into something God is already doing, that is close to his heart, and that is happening at the exact right time to match up with your life and your efforts. The calls I've read about in the Bible - Moses for one - match up a person with a passion to a huge agenda God has at the exact historical and social moment that change can happen. This three way matching strikes me as pretty rare.

On one hand it seems like God does give us passions and dreams that match our own culture and placement in history - for example, I was not born with the dream of being the one to free the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. I am like five thousand years too late for that one. So it is nice that I'm not passionate about it. But on the other hand, doesn't it seem very special, and almost coincidental, that your passion would match something God is already doing in the world at the exact moment of your life? I am thinking of people who spent their lives working against slavery, apartheid, civil rights - and died before the fruits of their labors were socially and historically realized. Can they have reached convergence on a personal level if the historical scene around them did not get "fixed?" How much of our own ability to attain afterglow is based on the circumstances around us?

What about my own leadership prayers about work? I don't even know what exactly I'm praying for, but if blessing and building up the Boston VARO is not something God is actually doing, how likely is it that I will be successful in my attempts to? And if God is not doing it, but I am passionate about it and think my calling has something to do with it, my chances of reaching convergence seem so so limited. Or is convergence more like that centered-set idea of constantly recalibrating yourself towards the center point, and the specifics of what and how we do it are actually less important than the direction we are pointing in? Maybe the calling is actually not about what activities you pursue at all, maybe it is just about constantly connecting and reconnecting with God, and in doing that you will become more fully yourself, and more fully connected to his purposes for the world.

I had been thinking of calling as what you do - your work, or maybe more generally your mindset plus your activities. But maybe I am way off. Maybe what we do or accomplish is a detail that comes out of our real calling to be deeply connected with and passionate about Jesus.

What do you think? Is it encouraging to think of "calling" as ultimately being connected with and passionate about Jesus, and the details of what you do and how you do it work themselves out, probably in some pretty great ways, but they are not ultimately the point of what you are doing? Or is it a cop out to say that you can become someone who reaches afterglow without having a real passion that can play itself out in your life and the world, aside from your relationship with God?