WHEN I was in my twenties, I lived in London and worked in the civil service. I was working on some important international negotiations and I felt, “I’ve made it — this is changing the world.”
Yet, one day, I was rushing home through Victoria Station, and I felt God prompt me to stop and talk to a homeless person sitting near the entrance. On this occasion, I followed the prompting, and we had a brief conversation. Nothing remarkable happened — no lightning conversion, no obvious breakthrough. But, as I walked away, I felt God say: “That conversation was the most significant thing you did for my Kingdom today.”
Fifteen or so years later, I’ve been back working on international negotiations, this time for the development agency Tearfund. But that experience outside Victoria Station flipped and deepened my understanding of what it means to seek God’s Kingdom. It has made me return, again and again, to the question: “What can I do today that will last into eternity?”
For me, the question functions a little bit like Jesus’s parables. According to the theologian Kenneth Bailey, author of Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes (SPCK), “a parable is not a delivery system for an idea, but a house in which the reader is invited to take up residence. The reader is invited to look at the world through the windows of that residence. The reader is encouraged to examine the human predicament through the worldview created by the parable.” A parable is not an anecdote; it is something you live in. It creates meaning. It gets behind your defences.
Similarly, the question “What can I do today that will last into eternity?” invites us to ponder our worldview, our priorities and our calling.
Consider the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10.25-37). Jesus tells the parable to explore the nature of love. The discussion he has immediately before telling the parable is around the command to “love God . . . and love your neighbour as yourself.” He tells the parable as a response to the question “Who is my neighbour?”
The parable is multilayered, and is certainly (to use Bailey’s analogy) a house that you could take up residence in for a while. What does it show us about what loving God and neighbour looks like? The sort of love exemplified by the Good Samaritan is a sacrificial reponse of “Love your enemies” which is beyond me most, or all, of the time.
This is a matter for concern, considering 1 Corinthians 13: “If I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. Love is patient, love is kind. . .” We can give all we have to the poor, but without love it means nothing.
Here lies the key point: all action, Kingdom-seeking, serving, and striving for justice has to come from love. It is more important to learn to love than to set up an amazing project, or launch a wildly successful campaign. If we can learn to love, then it will ensure that we will make the right choices when challenges arise, just as with the Good Samaritan. He was moved with compassion, and, as a result, he took a great personal risk for the benefit of the injured person. He saw the man’s humanity, and he loved and gave of himself accordingly.
How do we learn to love like that? That is another question to ponder. . .
A SECOND perspective on working out your calling is this: “Don’t ask what the world needs: ask what makes you come alive, and go do it, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
When I first heard this quote, I assumed it had come from a modern self-help guru. I recently discovered, however, that the quote is attributed to Howard Thurman, a pastor, civil-rights activist, and adviser to Martin Luther King, Jr. That revelation made me take it a lot more seriously.
I think that discovering our calling — our vocation in life — goes hand in hand with a process of self-discovery, of uncovering the unique reflection of the image of God that he has placed in you. It is a process of identifying the values (principles and convictions about what is important in life) that God has placed at your core. And it is when you live in line with these values that you really come alive.
istockWhat is your calling? Think about your values. What is God giving you hope for?
When I took the job in the civil service, I was partly making the decision out of an underlying value around “status”. I don’t think I was conscious of it at the time, but “status” was a value that I had inherited from the world, or people around me, and it was unwittingly influencing some very big decisions. The problem was that “status” is not actually a core value for the person God has made me to be. And some of my actual core values — to do with “adventure” and “freedom” — were not well realised in the life of a civil servant.
Our values sit at a level deeper than specific causes or issues, even though they may be connected to them. They help to shape what makes us feel alive, what inspires us, and what makes us angry. For me, they explained why, after a few years, I was getting restless in my civil-service job. I had learned a lot, but working in a big bureaucracy isn’t exactly the epitome of adventure.
I have realised, instead, that, in a work context, my value of “adventure” sits pretty close to pioneering, and that is why I love starting new projects.
A THIRD perspective concerning calling is to consider: “What is God giving you hope for?” “Hope” is an odd word in the English language. When we use it in sentences such as “I hope it’ll be sunny tomorrow,” or “I hope that the exam goes well for you,” or “I hope the train won’t be delayed,” there is always an element of uncertainty.
When we read of “hope” in the Bible, though, it is quite different. Hope is tied to God’s promises and his character. For instance, in the letters in the New Testament, the early Christians hoped for the new creation to come. Hebrews says: “We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure.” The writer is referring to the great promise of the ultimate restoration of the relationships between God, humanity, and creation. Hope like this — dependent on God, on his character, and on the promises he has made — is of a very different kind from the hope we usually talk about.
Nevertheless, there is a tension at the heart of hope. We have an eternal hope for restoration and renewal, but, sometimes, God also gives us specific hope for particular instances of renewal in our time. Without it, we wouldn’t start working on many of the injustices we see today; they just look too big, too intractable.
In thinking about this, I often return to Ezekiel 37: the valley of dry bones. God leads Ezekiel back and forth in a valley full of bones, making sure he has a good look at them. Then he asks: “Can these bones live?” Bones are the remnants of something long dead. They embody and symbolise death.
istockistock
God knows the answer, but it matters what Ezekiel thinks about this issue. God wants to give Ezekiel a part to play in bringing restoration and renewal in place of death; instead of being a neutral observer, or an interested onlooker, Ezekiel has the opportunity to be an active participant. But he’s unlikely to participate if he has no hope for these bones. And, sure enough, Ezekiel partners with God to speak life to the bones, and they come together and stand up on their feet, forming a vast army.
I have worked on projects where the bones have, indeed, come together, and formed something that we couldn’t possibly have imagined. I’ve also worked on projects that haven’t turned out as I hoped. Even successful projects have often been very hard at points along the way.
Navigating this tension between our sure hope that all things will one day be made new and the hope for specific instances of restoration in the present is at the heart of what it means to seek God’s Kingdom. For now, though, you may want to consider whether God is leading you to a particular valley at the moment, and asking you whether something just might be possible there. . .
“What can I do today that will last into eternity?” I hope this question prompts as much fruitful reflection for you as it has for me. I am sure there are many great answers, but just to recap three thoughts to get you started: Learn to love. Find out what makes you come alive. And ask God, “What are you giving me hope for?”
Rich Gower is a co-author, with Rachel Walker, of The Hopeful Activist: Discovering the vital change you were made to bring, published in May by SPCK at £10.99 (Church Times Bookshop £9.89); 978-0-281-08824-9. He launched the Hopeful Activists podcast in 2019 with Rachel Walker, Abi Thomas, and Beth Saunders, as part of the Praxis Centre for Hope and Activism. praxiscentre.org.