a prayer for imagination.

Father, if i may say so,

if it makes any difference to You,

i don't want to care too much about my life,

about where i go,

or about what i do.

i want to be content to trust You,

to trust that i am following You,

to trust that You are leading me.

i want to be content to live a quiet life,

or a busy one if You lead me to it.

but Father, i don't want to end up

flowing down that main stream,

or any one of its seemingly infinite tributaries.

i don't want to take that straight, wide path.

i want to flow down the River of Life,

rapid as it may be, rocky as it may be,

full of "dangers" as it may be.

and i want to take the long, narrow, winding path

that leads to Righteousness and Everlasting Life.

Father, as i continue through this season of life,

on this particular stretch of path,

i ask for strength.

i ask that, in the empty moments,

in the menial hours,

in the darkness,

i might have not only peace,

not only patience and faith,

but that i might have divine energy,

courage and endurance,

humility and boldness,

and prophetic imagination.

[Thy Kingdom come,

Thy will be done,

on earth as it is in Heaven.]

O God, grant that wherever i might be,

and whatever i might do,

that i might live as Your child,

as a member of the mystical body of Christ,

as a citizen of the kingdom of heaven.

grant that i might be

an instrument of Your peace,

of Your grace and mercy,

of Your love,

and of the Spirit of the Hope of Redemption.

vocation and purpose and Faith and Life.

[at the start He was there
in the end He’ll be there
and after all our hands have wrought He forgives

oh the Glory of it all is
He came here for the rescue of us all
that we may live for the glory of it all

all is lost find him there
after night dawn is there
after all falls apart He repairs

oh the Glory of it all is
He came here for the rescue of us all
that we may live for the glory of it all

oh He is here for redemption from the fall
that we may live for the glory of it all

after night comes the light
dawn is here it’s a new day
everything will change
things will never be the same
we will never be the same

oh the Glory of it all is
He came here for the rescue of us all
that we may live for the glory of it all

oh You are here for redemption from the fall
that we may live for the glory of it all]

-david crowder

i have been thinking a lot lately. there has been a lot of familiarity to life, and yet, something is profoundly different. i have been thinking a lot about jobs and careers and missional work and aid work and peacemaking work and the overall ideas of vocation and calling. but mostly, i have been thinking about purpose.

yesterday, i had the joy of getting to spend some time with and getting to know some gainesville folks named Caleb and Michelle, and we spent some time talking about these things. i met them through a mutual friend who had told me about their furniture-making business, though i didn't actually meet them until i walked through their front door yesterday afternoon. but i was interested in their work and in their larger life as a part of a community that i have been drawn to for years, and they were kind to welcome me.

i can't recall much of our conversation in detail. we spent some time talking about dogs and Montana and Wal-mart. i suppose that talking about those kinds of things gave us a context and a comfort in which we could talk about other things, things more specifically of God. it was in that context and comfort that i remember us talking about convictions and desires and passions and calling and vocation, and, ultimately, purpose. i remember thinking about purpose. i remember asking myself, okay, what is my purpose?

i remember asking myself, and i think that it is something that i have been going back to a lot for a while, what if i never hear another word from God about the direction of my life? what if He never leads me to a vocation? what if i never receive a "calling?" what then? am i supposed to just wander through life, always reminding myself that God never called me to anything? am i supposed to grab myself by the boots and throw myself up there, to make a life for myself? i certainly don't want to waste my life. but how would i be led? where would i go? how would i sort through all of the confusion within myself and around?

i have been learning a lot about faith during these past few months, in a rather new sense. i have lately been facing the reality of the weakness or incompleteness or lacking of my faith: most practically, the inactive nature of my faith. i have been facing the reality that though i always say that i have faith, that i trust God, what i most often am saying is that if God shows me where to go and what to do, i will go there and do it. and i will wait patiently, faithfully, until God shows me where to go and what to do. but i have been challenged and have begun to see how flawed my understanding of faith must be if i believe that this is the kind of faith which God requires. i have begun to see, from God's word about faith, that faith is not obeying certainty. quite the opposite, faith is following the uncertainty of God's guidance, trusting that He is in fact God, loving and wise and powerful, that He does in fact desire to save and restore and redeem and lead us to Himself and to His Kingdom, that His ways are perfect and beyond our comprehension. i have begun to see that true Faith is not a weak intellectual or emotional bond to a vague notion of God, but a complete and thorough surrender of my life into the hands of God, into the work of Christ and the movement of His Spirit. Faith is active. true Faith leads me not to say that i will follow God if He visibly leads me, but to throw myself at Him and beg for His life, knowing that to follow Him though i see nothing is far better than to follow a path weakly illuminated by my own understanding. to follow Him, wherever He leads, is my only Hope of Life.

Faith, as i have begun to better understand it, is to actively enter into the life of Christ, to surrender myself to the work of His Holy Spirit, trusting in the love and goodness and grace and mercy of an Almighty God.

and so, in light of this Faith, as i have been thinking a lot about jobs and careers and missional work and aid work and peacemaking work and the overall ideas of vocation and calling, i have mostly been thinking about purpose. i have begun to see that my weak faith which wanted for certainty was really a quite selfish faith, wanting to ensure my conception of my good and my well-being. it was not a faith which trusted that God's good for me will always be better than any that i could imagine for myself. and i have realized that perhaps all of these thoughts about vocation and calling, though not entirely faithless, not entirely sinful, do have a tendency to find a root in or a stream toward the same selfishness, the same concern with my good, my desire, my well-being. and my glory?

the purpose of Creation was and is and will always be the Glory of God. the purpose of Christ's life and death and resurrection from the dead were and are and always will be the Glory of God. the purpose of my life and salvation and restoration and redemption are and will always be the Glory of God. i trust God, i actively enter into Faith, because i believe that only His Spirit can lead me to the life of Christ, and only through His Life can mine ever be for the Glory of God.

perhaps i do have a calling. perhaps God is leading me to a vocation. but i have begun thinking that perhaps it shouldn't matter much to me. my purpose is to glorify God, in my inner life with Him, and in the ways in which my inner life with Him flows outward. and it is only by His grace and mercy that i Hope for that Life. calling or not, vocation or not, He will give me Life.

and this leads me to His Peace.

exile [Hope].

[a Christian is essentially an exile in this world in which he has no lasting city. the very presence of the Holy Spirit in his heart makes him discontent with worldly and material values. he cannot place his trust in the things of this life. his treasure is somewhere else, and where his treasure is, his heart is also... we are saved by hope for that which we do not see and wait for it with patience. the Holy Spirit is the One who fills our heart with patience... the trials that seem to defy our hope and ruin the very foundations of all patience are meant, by the Spirit of God, to make our hope more and more perfect, basing it entirely in God, removing every visible support that can be found in this world.] - TM