Abi's Lent: Day 12

In chapter 9 of The Jesus Creed, Scot talks about Mary and vocation. This chapter, as so many other things I read, had just too many points to process well. I yearn for a simpler life on so many levels....

I agree with him about the word vocation being not very well understood. And I also like his classifications: general and specific. I'll explain! ;^) Each of us has a general vocation or task, which is summed up in the Jesus Creed: Love God/Love Others. But we also have any number of specific "special assignments" -- things that only you can do.

I like to say it like this: There never has been, nor will there ever be, another YOU. If you do not embrace the tasks that only you can do, they will never be accomplished as you could have done them. Some of them may get picked up by someone else, but they will never be what was planned.

This is not guilt (The Abbess doesn't do guilt!), but rather simple truth. If Robert and I had not conceived our three boys exactly when we did, we would not have these three boys ... and our life would not be what it is today. I have a number of vocations that center around family -- and no one else can do these things if I do not do them. I am painfully aware of this....

I like Scot's quote of Dorothy Sayers, that vocation is "...the thing one lives to do" and it is "...the medium in which he offers himself to God." In this way vocation is sacred....

But Scot moves on to Mary's story of vocation and speaks to reputation, just as he did with Joseph yesterday. God stepped into their lives and "ruined" both of their reputations! Reminds me slightly of Job ... and one wonders a wee bit about the cost of having Papa "especially fond of you" -- if you know what I mean. ;^)

Redeeming past reputations is one of the things God does best. He sees and knows and accepts us in Jesus ... and our vocation becomes the daily offering of all we have and are to God and then, as Lewis says in the Narnia books, "accept the adventure that Aslan sends."

The important thing to remember is that when God redeems our past, he does not remove the wounds -- he heals them. The scars remain as testimony to the miracle. This is very purple work, friends, this embracing the pain and suffering and scars. We tell these kinds of inspirational stories looking back. But the minutes and hours and days and weeks and years of faithfulness to vocation are not easy. They are the cross that Christ asks us to bear.

I did a lot of thinking about vocation in the guise of understanding "vision" ... and sometime I will process the wonderful little book that helped me.

...many things left unsaid. Isn't that always the case?

Leaning on Papa.