You are being called out

Vocatio – Greek meaning “call.” English root is vocal or voice. When one is called out they are marked, or placed in a situation they must contend with. A “vocation” then is something we are called to – either a job, a mission, a craft, etc.

It seems that we have a tug of war in our lives in how we view our daily work in the world. On one hand we buy into the Genesis 3:17 description of the human race “in the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken, you are dust and to dust you shall return.” On the other, we do discover in our daily work joy and it does indeed feel like we are partaking of God’s creative task.

Dorothy L. Sayers puts it this way (Essay “Vocation in Work”):

“… the first thing [the author of Genesis] tells us about God, in whose image both man and woman were created, is that [God] was … a creator. He made things. Not presumably, because He had to, but because He wanted to … And there is something quite distinctive about [the human being]: [they] make things – not just one uniform set of things, as a bee makes a honeycomb, but an interminable variety of different and not strictly necessary things, because [they] want to.”

She goes on to say that we as human beings, even in our fallen life, we still are near to our divine pattern that we continually make things, as God makes things, for the fun of it!

So the question comes then … so how is what I do in my daily work holy work?

I think the answer lies in the fact that we are not fully human until we produce or make something – anything. It is holy because God has deemed the work of your hands as holy. (Of course for this short essay I am avoiding any talk of the ethics of work, that is for another time).

So now that your work is holy, what does that make you but divine! Not because of what you do, but because you are doing it. You are fulfilling your divine calling, your vocation, that which has called you out!

You are made in the image of God. God creates because God can’t help it. You create because you are a child of God. 

God’s work. Our Hands!