Earlier this month we met with the incredible Bill Fullilove for a virtual professional development retreat. During this retreat we discussed the theology of work and professional tips to discover our calling and career choice. We learned the Bible gives us everything we need for faith and vocation, but it doesn’t give us everything we may want. Our primary “call” in life is not work/ vocation, but rather Christ Himself. Work is not a result of sin. God created work to be good and perfect, however, it was tampered by the fall/ sin. There is a difference between “biblical” work and “worldly/ modern” work. Biblical work is described as living to serve others with creative energy. Modern work is described as working to make money in order to live.
One of the workshops that we did to help us find our vocation was listing out our gifts, desires, and opportunities. The hope for the exercise was that when determining a potential career, we would come back to the list and if it checks all three boxes, then that is a great sign! During the exercise, I had no problem drafting a list of gifts and opportunities. To me, these were concrete and easily identifiable. I knew I was right and safe writing down my known gifts and opportunities. However, when it came to desires, I really struggled to come up with a list. It was almost as if, I was afraid to write them down. The desires I did write down were very vague and non-specific. I realized I was afraid of letting myself desire things. I was afraid God didn’t actually want me to dream, and develop longings for things. While unpacking this, I realized that because I didn’t let myself desire or dream, I didn’t get excited about things in the future and therefore I was lacking essential motivation for life.
When I got back from the retreat, I started diving into the word of God, hoping to find out what He has to say about us and desire. For all I knew, I falsely believed that if I desire something other than God, it was borderline idolatry. What I didn’t know was that our lives are one continuous movement into the direction of our deepest longings. The deepest, most wonderful things of this life were never intended to fully satisfy us, but to point us toward God.
“For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling.” 2nd Corinthians 5:1-2
As I continued to unpack and wrestle with this beautiful concept of longing, I stumbled across this blessing from John O’Donohue’s ‘To Bless the Space Between Us’:
Blessed be the longing that brought you here and quickens your soul with wonder.
May you have the courage to listen to the voice of desire, that disturbs you when you have settled for something safe.
May the forms of your belonging- in love, creativity, and friendship- Be equal to the grandeur and the call of your soul.
May the ones you long for long for you.
May your dreams gradually reveal the destination of your desire.
May a secret Providence guide your thought and nurture your feeling.
May your mind inhabit your life with the sureness with which your body inhabits the world.
May your heart never be haunted by ghost-structures of old damage
May you come to accept your longing as divine urgency.
May you know the urgency with which God longs for you.
Today I pray that we all will have the courage to listen to the voice of desire!
-Maddie Dreffer