"The Practice of Living with Purpose"

The practice that we are looking at this week is Vocation, or as Barbara Brown Taylor puts it, “The Practice of Living with Purpose.” I feel like this is an especially fitting practice for us, as our paid vocations all reside at the same organization. However, even though our jobs take place under one umbrella, there is such a rich diversity of experiences that we have in our shared vocations at Methodist Family Health. Some of us work with clients all shift, every shift, some of us work in a (fairly) quiet office, but are still extremely busy. Some work on the same wing of the same building every day, others travel to multiple locations back-and-forth across the state in the span of a week. Some of us spend all day at our desk, and some of us don’t even have a desk.  Some of us have relatively settled work routines, and some of us never know what we will encounter from day-to-day. It’s kind of funny that we all can say that we work at Methodist Family Health with such different experiences, yet we truly are all working toward a shared goal of giving the best possible care to those who may need our help. This care looks like cooking and cleaning, like answering phones and paying bills, like attending meetings, like listening to clients process their past and look toward their future, like playing basketball, and like driving kids to court.

However, whatever our job is at MFH, it’s just a part of our total vocation. Our vocation is what we do, but it’s not only what we are paid to do. Our vocation encompasses all the things that we do in our lives. Vocation is our job, yes, but it’s also cleaning our house, feeding our family a meal, or cutting the grass. It’s teaching Sunday School, volunteering at the Food Bank, or riding your bike. Barbara Brown Taylor reminds us in this chapter that our larger vocation is “the job of loving God and neighbor as myself.”

As teenagers and young adults, so many of us stress over finding the perfect career. Those of us who try to follow God add an extra layer of “what does God want me to do with my life,” and we can end up so anxious about the future that we are afraid to take any steps. I don’t know about you, but there is absolutely NO WAY that 18-year-old Amy could have predicted that I would be living where I live, doing what I do. I love it, and in no way do I want to change it, but it’s just not what I would have said I planned for my future (nor really were most of the steps that I took on the way here.) I think our focus in our jobs, and in the totality of our vocations, need to shift from “what” to “how.” “Whatever I decided to do for a living, it was not what I did but how I did it that mattered,” Taylor writes.

This reminds me of a verse that 18-year-old Amy really loved (and actually quoted as part of my graduation speech, I believe.) “ And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.” (Colossians 3:17) If we give our vocation, whether it is our job, our entertainment, or our chores, our full focus, we can be proud of what we are doing, and we can see it as a means to connect with God and with other people.  Vocations rarely are done in silos. Even if we don’t directly interact with another person, our work will probably eventually be seen and used by others, or our work enables others to do their work.

The challenge of living with purpose is to find meaning in our vocation. The practice involves finding something to do everyday that feeds your sense of purpose, without judgement as to how “important” others see it. The things that give you purpose may seem totally pointless to someone else, but that’s just one reason that God created us to live in community. We need each other. Others need us to play our part, and in order to continue to function in the workplace, and in life, we need others to play their parts, as well. As you have time, thank God for the part and purpose that you have, and thank another for the way that they play their part in their vocation.