When the Call Shifts

Long ago, when I was in undergraduate school, I was surrounded by people, mostly males, who would confidently talk about their call to anyone willing to listen.  They knew exactly when God came knocking at the door of their lives.  They knew exactly what God wanted them to do.  They had a plan for how they would do it, a plan that usually involved going to seminary and becoming a lead pastor at a church like the ones of their childhoods.

I often sensed a whiff of condescension and pity when they surveyed the rest of us who had no call and no plan.  I would love to know if those college colleagues went on to have whopping midlife crises where they lost their sense of their call or when things didn't go smoothly or when they stopped being sure of what God wanted them to do or when history/current events intervened.

Of course, I don't know that I have coping skills that are any more sharply honed when it comes to the crisis of call.  Before the pandemic, I thought I was coming closer to having a sense of call--not in the way that those guys in college had a call, but in a limping towards a fuzzy vision kind of call.

And now, I often feel that I've lost the vision altogether.  Or maybe the vision has shifted.  Before the pandemic, I hadn't made the kind of video parable/poem/sermon/meditation type thing that's captured my imagination since May. 

Let me explain in a vignette via Facebook.

A few days ago, I made this post on Facebook:  "When I said I wanted to study eschatology, I didn't really have our current situation in mind. I was thinking more about a deep dive into ancient prophets or T. S. Eliot's "The Waste Land" or a comparison of nuclear war movies and climate crisis themes. I wasn't thinking about a case history of Florida."

One of my pastor friends responded:  "After the 2004 hurricanes, I was asking myself a similar question as I had always felt a pull towards disaster relief ministry."

I wrote back, " If you still feel that call, I think it's a growth ministry. Sigh. I have spent 10 years saying I felt called to be a hospice chaplain, and I keep feeling like God says, "Great. i can use you right where you are." I'm ready to be called to a different kind of ministry--perhaps the director of virtual creative encounters with the Holy. Hmm. Let me dream about that for a time."