Vocation
My daughter loves nature. Baking mud pies, catching lizards, climbing trees, gazing at stars, playing with her 3 dogs, one cat, one turtle, one parakeet, and the newest addition to the family, an orphaned baby hummingbird.
At six years old, she's exhibiting an insatiable appetite for learning about the animal kingdom. Perhaps she'll be a zoologist. Broadly, perhaps her love for nature will nurture her love for learning. Many of us know that such passions at an earlier age have the ability to drive us along a path that may not necessarily end where we expect but nevertheless leads us right into the very thing we were always meant to be.
Madam toastmaster, fellow members, and anyone who's been impassioned to do something or be someone, this is a quick study in vocation.
Today we typically use the word vocation to describe a specific type of trade school or occupational training program or simply a job.
Vocation however is much broader, grander, richer, fuller, and even holier.
The word vocation is derived from the Latin "vox" or voice; "vocatio" or summons; "vocare" or to call.
According to Webster's dictionary, vocation has three definitions.
1 a summons or strong inclination to a particular state or course of action; especially a divine call to the religious life
2 the work in which a person is employed or occupation
3 the special function of an individual or group
Let's condense those definitions for this morning's study. I propose that vocation essentially means three things:
Occupation. The call to action.
Compassion. The call to help.
Commission. The call of a Caller.
Lets begin our short study with a view of occupation. In simplest terms, we are called to action. My daughter's curiosity of nature, in particular, animals, may lead her to a job at a zoo or as a veterinarian or on the Serengeti. Ask any child today what they want to be when they grow up and they answer quickly and confidently. We all hear or know of people who at a very young age knew they’d become a scientist or fireman or secretary or salesman.
My wife inherently knew she wanted to be a teacher. She’d arrange her toyroom as a classroom and instruct her siblings and cousins to follow along in the lesson of the day.
Confucius is known to have said, “Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” His point is clear, when we identify our personal, self-evident interests, talents and passions, we can pursue vocation with purpose, discipline, conviction, enjoyment and action.
Sometimes we may not necessarily know the specifics of our vocation but we sense its essence; to help others.
In the broadest sense, the second definition of vocation is that we are called to serve others with compassion; often said as benefiting the common good.
Compassion isn’t just an empathetic, emotive response. It speaks to the heart of what we all, in some capacity, exercise: the organic declaration that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
During the Cold War, John Kennedy in a plea to the world’s civility said, “For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.”
The easy examples of considerate and compassionate vocations are doctors, nurses, teachers and ministers. But the McDonald’s worker is showing compassion by helping to feed others. It probably doesn’t sound as noble as feeding the homeless woman but maybe that’s because we’ve not clearly examined vocation. The man that paves the potholes is saving your car from damage and your pocketbook from emptiness. The Edison engineer is helping to provide power to your home so that you can live comfortably and safely when its 110-degrees outside. The lumberman who mills trees ensures that we have roofs over our heads.
And when some of us don’t’ fulfill the call to compassion we are reminded by other compassionate people, legislators, judges and police officers.
The point is simple; we are called to show compassion to one another and to ensure that our deepest, basic human needs are fulfilled.
Finally, if what we’ve said is true; that is, that we are predisposed with certain character traits and talents and passions and expectations and desires and longings that call us to action. And that these convictions are placed in each of us to serve an occupation that enables us to express compassion toward one another—then it may help us to briefly consider that these gifts are the result of a commission.
My final thought on vocation is that in order to have been called, there must be a Caller. A commission originates from a Commissioner.
Earlier I quoted the Declaration of Independence, that we “are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights”. If then, we hold these truths to be self-evident, that these basic building blocks of society and common good and occupation and compassion are established by a divine Creator; then we must consider the commission of vocation with some basic concession and appreciation of the Creator Himself.
This God personally demonstrated vocation when in the very opening act we are told He planted a garden within the Garden and invited man and woman to join with Him in working and cultivating and enjoying the fruits of their labors. In other words, labor was always designed to be a divine appointment where we could participate with God in the ordering, nurturing and caring of this present world.
It is in this basic framework of how the world should function that we glimpse the full purpose and prose and power of vocation. We are called by a Creator to action in order to help others and to ultimately serve a far grander role than just working for the weekend. I’m afraid that if we miss this component of vocation, we are simply spinning our wheels, accomplishing nothing, going nowhere, often resenting work.
Ultimately, we are called so that we might imitate the Divine in bringing heaven to earth, just as the Lord’s Prayer states, “your will be done on earth as it is in heaven”.
Saint Paul the Apostle reminded us that all work is sacred, “Whatever you do, work at it wholeheartedly as though you were doing it for the Lord and not merely for people,” he wrote in his letter to an early church in Colossia.
In closing, may we continue to study vocation as a means by which we achieve the very things we were always meant to and to help the world in ways we were ultimately designed to by the Great Commissioner Himself.
