[Part 2 here]
This past Sunday in Salt+Light Community, we kicked off 2023 by asking folks to take 90 seconds and answer two questions. I’ll invite you do the same…but you can’t look at the second until after you’ve answered the first:
What would you say are your top 4-5 priorities in life?
If someone had an all-access look at your time, finances, thought-life, etc, what would they say are your top 4-5 priorities in life?
Are your answers exactly the same? Wildly different? Or (likely) some mix of the two?
I saw a comic last week, of a child asking an adult, “What’s a new years’ resolution?” The adult answered dismissively, “oh, it’s just a to-do list for the first week of January.” We laugh because that feels true. We know that this is the time of year (maybe the only time of year?) when we get introspective and commit to starting/stopping doing, doing better, or changing some behavior. But we also know that those commitments often last for only a few months. Or weeks. Or days. Or minutes.
Because they’re just that: an attempt to merely change our behavior.
Resolutions are usually action-oriented, and focused on the surface. So what if we considered something deeper? “Vocation,” as used today, usually refers to one’s job/career. But in its historic use, “vocation” was more than that: it referred to one’s calling.
Our calling – our vocation – matters more than our actions. In other words, “who we are” matters more than “what we do.” Our identity and inner life matter more than our activity or outward expressions. But what we believe about our identity and inner life also overflows into our activity and outward expression. “Who we are” shapes “what we do.”
So… what is your primary vocation? Your highest calling? Your core identity? These things matter more than what you want to start or stop doing, or do better, in any new year.
Humanity’s truest vocation stems from humanity’s origin story. In Genesis 1-2, Adam and Eve were created uniquely and in perfect unity; they were dependent; and they obeyed God while co-laboring with him in his work. They existed in perfect relationships with God, themselves, each other, and the rest of God’s creation. In short, Adam and Eve were first called to God in perfect relationship, and then called for God to bear his image to the rest of creation.
We know that this perfect, unified, image-bearing reality ended when sin and brokenness entered the world in Genesis 3. (And I know that not everyone reading this accepts that origin story – again, who you are overflows into what you do, so even our belief/rejection of Genesis 1-2 stems from what we think about our core identity.)
But before sin entered the world (at the start of the Bible), and after God perfectly recreates the heavens and earth (at the end of the Bible), that is the primary vocation God intended for all people. Including you. Before you are a spouse, boss, sibling, parent, widow, employee, child, classmate, single, or any other label – and frankly, whether you believe it or not – you are first and foremost a child of God! Your core identity is “beloved son or daughter.” Your highest calling is to be with God. Your primary vocation is to join him in reflecting his image, wherever you exist in this broken world, giving glimpses of his goodness and glory in your normal, everyday lives and relationships.
But that primary calling – to exist with God and to exist for God – gets lost when we replace our primary vocation with something lesser. Other peoples’ opinions consume us; other roles/titles define us; other things promise to fix us/make us better; siren calls promise hope; other priorities push God from our minds. That’s what happens when we forget our primary vocation, highest calling, and core identity.
Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, and reign are good news because they reverse the effects of the fall. In his perfect life, Jesus embodied humanity’s truest vocation. In his death, he reconciled our brokenness with the Father, providing a way to be restored to our original identity. In his resurrection, Jesus overcame sin’s curse: death gave way to life – new, full life, for eternity and today. And in his reign, Jesus promises a day with no more confusion around our calling: we will exist as Adam and Eve did, in perfect unity and relationship with God, self, others, and creation. And through God the Spirit, we get to display glimpses of that coming reality, every time we return to our truest identity and live it out in everyday life today.
Why does this matter, and what does it look like to return to our primary calling in everyday life? We’ll explore that in a next posting. But we’ll close with this (surprising?) fact: the concept of “priorities” (plural) has only existed in human language since ~1940. Before that, the word was exclusively singular: “priority.” By definition, that second usage is the only possible right one: the Latin, prioritas, literally means “first”... and we can’t have multiple “firsts”!
That’s part of the issue at hand: it’s part of why we forget our primary calling. When the other, lesser things that try to define our identity and dictate our primary calling, those things (or people, roles, titles, whatever) can feel equal in priority to God… but we can't have multiple firsts!
So what is your primary vocation? What is your highest calling? What is your core identity? And returning to the two questions we started with, instead of 4-5 “priorities” (plural) what is truly your single “priority” in life… and if someone had access to your time, finances, and thoughts, would they agree? “Who you are” matters more than “what you do,” and “who you are” shapes “what you do.” Above anything else, you were called to God, and you were called for God. How can that truth shape your everyday life and relationships, today?