What's Your Calling?

I was sitting on the concrete floor of my new apartment in China, watching the carpet man install our new floor. Blue, as I recall… He worked quietly, quickly, with precision, cutting the shape and fastening it down. I asked him, “How long have you been installing carpets?” He was only 20 years old, but he started doing this 4 years ago. “Do you like this job?” He gave me a blank stare. “I mean, do you enjoy working with carpets? Is it satisfying?” I’ll never forget what he told me—“It’s carpet. I don’t like it, or not like it, I just have to do it, to live.”

And then it hit me like a ton of bricks. He knew nothing of choice in his job. He never got to ask the questions—“What do I want to do with my life? What are my gifts, and skills, and how can I develop them? What is my calling?” Until that moment, I think there was a naïve part of me that unconsciously wanted to believe that he was as passionate about carpet as I was about my work in China.

So what percentage of the world really DOES have the privilege of asking what we might desire for our vocation? 1%? 2%?

The fact that it took me till age 25 to begin understanding this, means that my culture, my background, my family’s financial situation put me in another category. A category where college was assumed, assessments were available to guide occupational self-discovery, and my desires were actually a real option for me. In fact, I’ve gotten to ask that question SEVERAL times throughout my life, in small & large ways.

(The point of this little post is not guilt….)

Nor am I talking about how we shouldn’t complain when we don’t like what we are doing. ALL of us, at times, have to do things we’d rather not do, and we’d all like to learn to find JOY in the midst of those undesirable, mundane things. But I’m asking—HOW DO WE DEFINE WORK—LIFE CALLING—VOCATION as Christians?

I don't have an answer...yet. But here’s my thought: HOWEVER we define WORK, from a Christian perspective, as people made in God’s image with different gifts to bless & grow His Kingdom

...that our definition has to work for the CEO on Wallstreet as well as it does for the sheepherder in Uganda.

Would love your thoughts!