by Demi Prentiss

The call that God places on each person’s life sometimes shows up as their ministry. But more often, when we look more closely, our call is bigger than our ministry.  Our call could be described as the melody of God’s song in our life. Our ministry could be understood as the lyrics – changing, most likely, as the time and season change. Often, the chorus will come back again and again, with verses speaking to specifics along the way.

When we listen well, we can hear God’s song wherever we find ourselves – at home, at work, in the community, engaging with the wider world, in our leisure time, in church, and in the quiet place deep in our souls. When we attune ourselves – every fiber of our being – to God’s song, we participate in God’s reigning among us, here and now.

Jonathan Maury, a brother in the Society of St. John the Evangelist, speaks to the many expressions of God’s call that show up among us. He points to Paul’s reminder to the new Christians in Corinth:

“Consider your own call,” the Apostle Paul writes to the fledgling disciples of the Church in Corinth. Now of course Paul knows that every disciple’s call comes from Christ alone, that they are each and all chosen to serve and to be glorified in the one Lord. Yet Paul says, “Consider your own call.” From his own transformative encounter with the risen Christ, Paul also knows that each disciple’s vocation is unique. For just as each person is an image and likeness of the one God unlike any other, so too the circumstances, gifts, and mission of each disciple called into Christ’s mystical Body have a personally peculiar manifestation in each one. Paul says, “Consider your own call,” reminding us that each woman or man’s call will be transformed by God into a strikingly particular life of love and self-offering in Christ.

Each of us, in our daily lives that shape our unique story, has an opportunity to answer God’s tuneful call on our lives, in our own “personally peculiar” way, in practically every decision we make. Be particular!