Last weekend my book club met to discuss two books, The Voluntourist by Ken Budd and Kisses from Katie by Katie Davis. Although the stories are very different, they are essentially about two people who choose to participate in overseas service projects/mission work while trying to figure out who they are and what their calling is in life. These books led to a discussion among my book club about our callings. "Do you know what your calling is? How do you know? What are we supposed to do when we don't know?" Most of us didn't have good answers to these questions, which we all agreed is a frustrating place to be. As women of faith, we are all confident in our calling as mothers and the calling we have to raise children of faith, but what about the other work in our lives that we could accomplish? What are those of us who do not hear God speak to us supposed to do?
Then I read my Advent devotional yesterday morning. The topic was prayer, and how prayer is an opportunity for us to hear God's voice. I will freely admit that although it sounds lovely, I do not expect this to happen to me. I have never heard God speak to me as if he was sitting next to me on the couch having a conversation. I don't doubt that God could communicate with me that way, but it hasn't happened yet. So this excerpt from Henri Nouwen's A Spirituality of Living was striking -
"The trouble is that as soon as we sit and become quiet, we think, Oh I forgot this. I should call my friend. Later on I'm going to see him. Our inner life is like a banana tree filled with monkeys jumping up and down. It is not easy to sit and trust that in solitude God will speak to us - not as a magical voice but as knowledge that grows gradually over the years. And in that word from God we will find the inner place from which to live our lives."
I hope the point I got from that jumps off the screen for my book club friends as well. The idea I pull from the passage is this: maybe we are expecting the wrong thing. Rather than expecting a magical voice to speak to us, and constantly being disappointed, maybe we should be expecting to receive knowledge from God. This is much more subtle and mysterious, but it resonates with me. It's why I believe the hours and hours that I have spent over the course of my lifetime attending worship services, participating in Bible studies, reading, talking, thinking, praying aren't meaningless. Maybe the collective experiences of my Christian walk create in my heart a knowledge of God and what He calls me to do. Maybe I should stop fretting so much about not hearing God and just see what happens as I attempt to live a life devoted to God...
Perhaps instead of magic we should be expecting the miraculous. Isn't that what the Advent and Christmas season are all about anyway?
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