During Lent my church is posting a weekly reflection on Facebook around our ‘I am the Way’ Easter theme. Here is a repost of the one I was asked to write this week on the topic of ‘Vision & Calling’. It was originally posted here.
VISION & CALLING.
There’s a lot of song and dance about vision and calling. There’s a lot of fuss; a lot of noise. You hear it all the time: I don’t know what I’m called to do. I can’t see where I’m heading. God hasn’t told me what to do. I don’t know what my vision or direction is.
I hear it in my own life. It’s endemic in church culture. I hear it in the attitude of the 18-30s I work with. I’ve heard it from older people and I’m hearing it from some teenagers. A modern entitlement to a personal and specific ‘call’ or ‘vision’.
In some ways, it is quite right to focus on vision. Without vision the people are unrestrained (Proverbs 29:18). They wander aimlessly in many directions. If the church is a body, it won’t get very far if its limbs are pulling in different directions. We become sheep who have forgotten they have a shepherd. We don’t get very far.
I am a sheep in that crowd. Time wasted pondering my life’s calling, formulating the perfect, grand vision and missing the point. It becomes all about me. My vision. My calling. Me, me, me. I am a sheep who has forgotten the shepherd. An aimless wanderer, never truly committed, waiting for something specific, something clear, something shiny, something for me. In the song and dance, in the fuss and the noise, perhaps we dismiss the visionary words of Jesus: love God, love everyone, make disciples. Maybe he was pointing us to a vision and calling that isn’t just about me, me, me.
The writer of Hebrews tells us to fix our eyes on Jesus as He is the author and perfecter of our faith (Hebrews 12:2). That’s the way to live. We spend a lot of time obsessing about vision but forget what this truly means. Vision is what our eyes see. Am I looking at myself? Or will I look to Jesus? Not just a casual glance, but a fixed stare. Fix your eyes on Jesus. The Good Shepherd. The head of the body. The one who is the author of all life. The one who perfected it all. The pioneer of our faith. The completer, the finisher. The beginning, the end.
What is He saying? What is He doing? Let’s get involved with that.
Our vision is Jesus. Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Nothing more, nothing less. Our calling is towards Him. Fix your eyes on Him. He is the way.
GENERATION: ARISE! 