Concluding Prayer of the Church: Midday Office - Jan 3rd

I intended to post this last week, but time got away from me. In fact, I just noticed that this prayer was the first thing I posted to this blog back in May 2nd, 2006. 

Well, I'm going to post it again anyway since this is such a beautiful prayer that covers so much of what I have been thinking about in terms of God's callings on our lives. But more than that, it expresses so eloquently how we are to relate to God in all the various aspects of our daily experience. Lord, hear our prayer.

O Lord my God, to you and to your service I devote myself,  body, soul, and spirit.

Fill my memory with the record of your mighty works; enlighten my understanding with the light of your Holy Spirit; and may all the desires of my heart and will center in what you would have me do.

Make me an instrument of your salvation for the people entrusted to my care, and grant that by my life and teaching I may set forth your true and living Word.

Be always with me in carrying out the duties of my faith. In prayer, quicken my devotion; in praises, heighten my love and gratitude; in conversation five me readiness of thought and expression; and grant that, by the clearness and brightness of your holy Word, all the world may be drawn into your blessed kingdom. All this I ask for the sake of your Son our Savior Jesus Christ.  Amen. 

 From The Divine Hours:Prayers for Autumn and Wintertime, by Phyllis Tickle (see also ExploreFaith)

Denver Blizzard of '06: Dec 20-21

The yardstick outside our back door reads 18.5 inches Wednesday night, and that was certainly not the deepest spot.

Thursday afternoon: Jack standing on what used to be the driveway ...

 

Clearing the driveway

Hard worker

Backyard sunrise Friday morning....

Spelling Suggestion in Live Writer

Does anyone else find this funny?

God at Work - Chapter 1: Part III

 This is a chapter about the Christian's calling in the world, so it is not just limited to what we would typically think of as a profession - secular or otherwise. Veith's point, and this is crucial, is that every kind of work is a sacred calling. So, because of the priesthood of all believers in Christ, parents are "priests" to their children. We are to nourish our children in their faith in Christ just as much as we provide for their other needs - clothing, food, comfort, guidance, education, and so on. We are called to love our children. This is a joyful obligation that all Christian parents have a responsibility, albeit imperfectly, to carry out to the best of their ability.  I know that I need all the help I can get.

Another consequence of this is that, once again, the sacred/secular dichotomy that seems such a fundamental concept in our culture, both outside and - unfortunately - inside the church is a false one. If all work, especially when done as an act of worship to God, is sacred, then it is not helpful to place a distinction where one does not really exist. It leads to the kind of muddy thinking that only working within the church counts for the Kingdom of God, and thus has eternal value, which is what we saw in the book I quoted from last posting.

Every kind of work, including what had heretofore been looked down upon - the work of  peasants and craftsmen - is an occasion for priesthood, for exercising a holy service to God and to one's neighbor.

This, to me, seems tremendously empowering. Because that means that everything can count for the Kingdom of God, and everything I do can therefore have eternal value. Of course, that also implies a far greater accountability, but that is something we can put on the backburner for another day.

My son Jack loves (and I do mean loves) to play construction. Every chance he gets he is constructing something in the sandpit at work, or pretending to pave our pathway with asphalt as in the picture. I want to encourage him in this as much as possible because, as he plays at working, he is learning the joy that can be found in creating something. And, one day I hope, he will be able to see that as a joyful way of serving God and others too.

Do you think about your work with a "priesthood of all believers"  mindset? Do you consider how every great or small thing you do is potentially a sacred (and by sacred I mean set apart for God) act of worship to God?

God at Work - Chapter 1: Part II

 

Veith has this to say about the influence of the Reformation on the doctrine of calling:

The Reformation notion of "the priesthood of all believers" by no means denigrated the pastoral office, as is often assumed...Rather, it taught that the  pastoral office is a vocation, a calling from God with its own responsibilities, authority, and blessings. But it also taught that laypeople as well have vocations, callings of their own that entail holy responsibilities, authorities, and blessings of their own." (18-19).

The upshot of this is that "the priesthood of all believers' did not make everyone into church workers; rather it turned every kind of work into a sacred calling" (19).

Contrast this line of reasoning with the following from When Life Throws You a Curve, by Billy Joe Daugherty, that we recently read in our church home group (emphasis mine):

When you want to do something and you cannot just sit there, then you have the call of God on your life. It could be any number of areas, and it does not mean you cannot work a regular, secular job somewhere. For us, we worked to pay for school and our living expenses, but we also wanted to be doing something for the Kingdom of God. And here is the reason: Whatever you do for the Kingdom of God will last into eternity.

We saw that working at our jobs would help us eat and get through school, but it was not going to count for anything in eternity.

...When you go after that call of God, you will do whatever it takes to seek it out and search it out and find your place in the Body of Christ. (p. 138-9)

Now, clearly Billy Joe has a very different view of calling than Veith and Luther. But Billy Joe seems to be in the majority. My experience is that this is certainly how I was taught to think about work and calling.

Has this been your experience too?

God at Work: Chapter 1 - The Christian's Calling in the World

"For Luther, vocation, as with everything else in his theology, is not so much a matter of what we do; rather, it is a matter of what God does in and through us" (9).

Veith prefaces God at Work with an explanation of what compelled him to write a book about "the paradigm shaking implications of the doctrine of vocation" (Ibid). It was reading Gustaf Wingren's Luther on Vocation that opened up his eyes to things he had never seen before, helping him to see his Christian life in a completely different way. And, I can say, the same is true for me. I am convinced that reflecting on Luther's teaching, through the thoughts of Veith and Wingren, has begun a work of transforming how I view calling/vocation and - in a broader sense - how I live my Christian life.

Chapter 1 - Introduction: The Christian's Calling in the World

Veith notes that Luther observed that when we pray the Lord's Prayer and ask God to give us this day our daily bread, it is by means of the vocations of others that God typically does this. Even though God is ultimately responsible for giving us our daily bread (i.e. providing for our basic daily necessities such as food, clothing, shelter, relationships, community etc), he does so through other human beings.

God has chosen to work through other human beings, who, in their different capacities and according to their different talents, serve each other. This is the doctrine of vocation. (14 - emphasis mine).

Even though work often appears meaningless, and can be a boring, thankless and oppressive task from our perspective, it is more than just the means to our survival. We can let it consume our lives in this fallen world, or we can allow the doctrine of vocation to reform and transform perspective:

The doctrine of vocation amounts to a comprehensive doctrine of the Christian life, having to do with faith and sanctification, grace and good works. It is a key to Christian ethics. It shows how Christiians can influence their culture. It transfigures ordinary, everyday life with the presence of God. (17 - emphasis mine).

I love that last sentence. I think that this is the key point for me. I have somehow imbued the view that my work is disconnected from my faith and spiritual practice, yet Veith is arguing that the opposite is true - it is actually in "ordinary, everyday life" of work, friends and family that the presence of God is truly to be experienced.

Vocation - Introduction: Why is Vocation Even Worth Talking About?

As a Christian, I have struggled a great deal with understanding what it is that God expects of me vocationally, and sometimes feel guilt and confusion for returning to a "secular" vocation instead of following through on my original plan to work full-time as a missionary. This is a long story, but the short of it is that I have been doing software development (and loving it by the way) for a number of years now, despite originally coming to the USA to train for missions work within the Christian church.

Every step of the way I have seen God's providential "hand" in how things have worked out, but sometimes I have felt uncertainty about whether I should stay in my chosen career, or move into a more “spiritual” and “significant” vocation. However, I love my job and find it hard to see how I could feel close to fulfilled doing anything else. 

Note that I have put quotes around some of the words above; I do this because these words need further nuance.

The reality is that the sacred/secular distinction is false since, as the Scriptures affirm, "The earth is the Lord's and all it contains." This is not only a comprehensive ownership, but also indicates an active teleology - the world has a purpose and a destiny. Also, while many would see church-work, or some kind of religious service (full-time or part-time, paid or voluntary) as more significant and spiritual than other seemingly more mundane pursuits (such as raising kids, doing the dishes, paying one's taxes, going to work, helping shovel snow off one's neighbor's sidewalk etc).

I feel that I lack a comprehensive framework of understanding for what it means to think "Christianly" about my profession so that I can move beyond a mere superficial approach to develop a deeper understanding of God's call on my life and how that can be expressed through my vocation as purposeful and sacred work. I also have difficulty in seeing how my marriage, parenting, studying, church involvement, mentoring, profession etc all fit together as significant aspects of my overall calling.

I decided that my need could best be stated as something like this:

Lack of a working theology of vocation sufficiently holistic to function as an integrative mechanism for the various facets of my life in community with God and others, particularly as it applies to my profession.

Long-winded, I know, but the bottom line is that I would like to move towards a clearer and more holistic understanding of how my professional life “fits” into being a Christian, and vice versa.  With that in mind, I decided to embark on my Denver Seminary training and mentoring program this semester with a view to developing such a working theology that I may be able to draw together the various vocational streams of my life and make some sense of how I ended up where I am.

We are required to commit to two major knowledge learning strategies in order to help us achieve our goal. So I chose the following two books to work through with my mentor:

• God at Work by Gene Edward Veith
• Callings: Twenty Centuries of Christian Wisdom on Vocation ed. by William C. Placher

Each book is excellent in its own way. God at Work is partly a 150 page distillation of Gustaf Wingren's Luther on Vocation. Veith has produced a marvellously accessible introduction to Luther's thoughts on vocation that will enrich anyone who takes the time to take it up and read. Callings is an anthology of Christian writings on vocation, and it would be difficult to find anything that comes close to the depth and breadth of coverage that this book provides. 

I would like start by reviewing God at Work, highlighting some of the insights that I found most helpful. I will tackle this in my next posting.