A Larger Calling Still

Abstract

The basic thesis of my contribution to this volume is that the whole of life should be understood as a response to God's call. A corollary to that thesis is that if our work is also to count as a response to that call, our jobs must become smaller and larger at the same time. They have to get smaller because work is only one facet of our total vocation. A job that takes over a person's life, a job that loses all reference to the independent spheres of family, community, and faith, is a job that threatens to collapse upon itself, sucking everything into its vortex of activity without referring us to a larger moral purpose that ultimately makes that activity meaningful and significant. That job needs to get smaller; it needs to find its place in the larger scheme of things. But a sense of religious vocation at work will also make our jobs larger. Not that they will take up more of our time. Rather they will be internally enriched as we seek to align our professional activity with our best understanding of the creative and redemptive purposes of God in this world. Our job descriptions will be expanded.