‘Manic Monday’ yields to contemplation of calling

It’s Monday, my day off. (There really is no such thing, is there?)

I work part time for a nonprofit agency, and I used to enjoy my Mondays—they were great for puttering around the house, doing laundry, paying bills, catching up on friends’ blogs…that kind of stuff (in addition to my everyday Mom duties of feeding, dressing, reading, coloring, breaking up fights and enforcing Wii restrictions). Lately, though—“lately,” as in the past 2-3 months—I have felt restless on these days off, unable to relax at home, wanting to be at the office where I can get going on my seemingly urgent To-Do List. Staying away from work on Mondays feels like sitting out the first 2 innings of a major league baseball game. (Or something like that.)

On the other hand, there’s part of me that just wants to be home alllll the time! Could it be the nesting instinct kicking in already?

“To work or not to work”—outside the home, as well as in it (the in-home work is a given)—is the much-ballyhooed debate of the past century among mothers. I’m not going to get into it here, except to share something from my favorite devotional book, A Guide to Prayer, by Rueben P. Job and Norman Shawchuck. In a section entitled “The Call to Ministry,” the editors share this passage from Evelyn Underhill’s The Spiritual Life (complete text at link):

So those who imagine that they are called to contemplation because they are attracted by contemplation, when the common duties of existence steadily block this path, do well to realise that our own feelings and preferences are very poor guides when it comes to the robust realities and stern demands of the Spirit.

St. Paul did not want to be an apostle to the Gentiles. He wanted to be a clever and appreciated young Jewish scholar, and kicked against the pricks. St. Ambrose and St. Augustine did not want to be overworked and worried bishops. Nothing was farther from their intention. St. Cuthbert wanted the solitude and freedom of his hermitage on the Farne; but he did not often get there. St. Francis Xavier’s preference was for an ordered life close to his beloved master, St. Ignatius. At a few hours’ notice he was sent out to be the Apostle of the Indies and never returned to Europe again. Henry Martyn, the fragile and exquisite scholar, was compelled to sacrifice the intellectual life to which he was so perfectly fitted for the missionary life to which he felt he was decisively called. In all these, a power beyond themselves decided the direction of life. Yet in all we recognise not frustration, but the highest of all types of achievement. Things like this—and they are constantly happening—gradually convince us that the over-ruling reality of life is the Will and Choice of a Spirit acting not in a mechanical but in a living and personal way; and that the spiritual life of man does not consist in mere individual betterment, or assiduous attention to his own soul, but in a free and unconditional response to that Spirit’s pressure and call, whatever the cost may be.

Say what?? We’re not meant to do what we want, what feels comfortable, what we prefer? Sounds counter-cultural…like Christ.

So here’s a question for my readers: You know the so-common-it’s-cliché prayer, “Lord, I’ll do anything for You, but please don’t make me a pastor’s wife”? Or how about, “Lord, I’ll go wherever you lead me, but please don’t send me to Africa”? What’s your limit? What prospective Spirit-led assignment makes you cringe? Personally, I would be reluctant to leave A-Town, for any reason (on a permanent basis, I mean—I love to travel). As for occupational resistance, I would wish to avoid the office of college president. Perhaps I could elaborate on the reasons why in a future blog. Or perhaps I would be wiser to keep my mouth shut. Not that it matters, since I’m not qualified. Then again, to evoke another evangelical adage: “God doesn’t call the qualified; He qualifies the called.” (Following the Spirit is dangerous, dangerous business!)