What is my calling

“When our earthly kingdoms has had a good year, we don’t necessarily long for the kingdom of God to break in. We like our own setup just fine.”

I thought that this quote from Plantinga summed up  many people’s feelings about our daily lives and also some of our views on vocation.  Many times people that are in college are just busy enjoying life along with trying to figure out what they want to do with their lives. However,   in addition they  should be asking themselves where does God want me to be, and what does he want me to do with my life.  When we take our vocation into our hands instead of trying to follow Gods will, then we completely miss out on the journey of faith expect of life.  That’s part of the reason that I came to Calvin College,  I wanted to figure out what I’m supposed to do with my life. So far I’ve tried doing this at Calvin by building my talents, and searching for God along the way

So far in my life I have definitely felt a push toward issues of sustainability and all things plant related. So I was glad when Plantinga brought the issue of sustainability because I am always interested in what other people have to say on the issue.  He says that it’s a shame that the secular realm has taken charge of the issue of sustainability. It’s sad because Christians are the ones that have a God given mandate to be stewards of the earth, yet many times we have been way less than satisfactory in this area. We should be leading the movement of reformation toward new ideas, instead of watching from the sidelines as the world around us changes. I was also in agreement with Paulo that the change should come from the bottom up. Otherwise either change won’t happen fast enough or changes will be made from the top down. This isn’t optimal because the majority won’t be represented when changes are made. Even if I don’t end up with a job in this area it will still be important to me. But whatever my calling is I’m sure that as long as I’m doing what God wants instead of whatever I want (which changes constantly) ill be okay.

Another concept that Plantinga brought was the building of virtues like, diligence, patience, charity, and ta-da stewardship. In my last philosophy class, we talked about the building of virtue through a conscience effort to improve oneself.  However, in addition to this it’s important to also ask God to help us work on virtues. It’s important to remember that God won’t just give you virtues , but he will put you into opportunities and situations where you need to use specific  virtues to get through. So be careful!!! I asked God for patience because I used to be a very impatient person. I naively thought that he would just give my more patience ,but instead he gave me hard family and friend issues that could only be worked out through patience. So I learned it in sort of a trial by fire kind of way.