Vocation

After months of working my way through the Mere Christianity Journal that project is finally complete. I am now reading The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, Volume III. So as I continue reading this massive volume of correspondence over the next couple of months I will share here my favorite quotes.
"Do you think one's vocation wh. looks so cryptic as a whole, is usually fairly clear from day to day and moment to moment? One usually has an idea what to do next. Need one know any more? It wd. be a pity if when He came He found me thinking about my vocation at a moment when I wd. have been better employed writing a letter, making a bed, entertaining a bore -- or something quite dull and obvious." Collected Letters, Volume III, p. 781.
Lewis is so good, and helpful and practical at certain points, and this is one of those points. We are asked so many times when we are young: "What do you want to be when you grow up?" It is, perhaps, a helpful question at a certain point in life. The problem is, many of us keep wondering what God wants us to be when we grow up and waste too much time pondering it on through adulthood and mid-life.
As Lewis points out, the important thing is what to do next. And God usually makes that fairly clear. He gives us just enough light to see the next step. After all, would we really want to know the future if we could? Would we want to know all the heartaches as well as all the joys we have in store if we choose a certain course? I doubt it.
Most of us know what we need to do today. So it is time to get down to business and do it. For me those daily tasks include: writing a sermon, getting the oil changed on the car, going to the bank and post office, picking up children from school, making dinner. Some of it can often seem boring and mundane--but if it is the work God has given me to do right now, and I believe it is, then if Jesus should come back today I think he will be pleased to find me fulfilling today's vocation.

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Will Vaus

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