Session 3. Called as We Are
Reading: Chapter Three in The Stories We Live
Resource: Calling Journal

Opening Prayer

Generous and loving God,
Blow through us, that we might sense your presence.
Wrestle with us, that we might discern your path.
Love us that we might become who you call us to be.

Generous and loving God,
help us to receive your call for us,
help us to feel your presence with us,
help us to discern the path you would have us follow. Amen. 

Part 1. Introducing Called as We Are 

God calls you as the person you are in the particularities of your life. You can only live our your vocation as the person you are; I can only become the person I am called to be in the context of my life. God’s call to you is not a generic calling, but is specific to your time in life and place in the history of the world. Vocation is God’s call to your life’s particularities as you know them, that which is a given in your life (gender, family, ethnicity, time in history) and what you can make of it (education, opportunities, relationships). Even your understanding of faith, vocation, and God arise from these contexts. You have been given this life, and you have to discover God’s call as you are. 
 
Vocation is about the whole of your life, your whole life long. How was God calling you as an infant or child? And now, how might God’s call relate to your development as youth, young adult, adult, and older adult? 
 
We develop in two ways: First you become a person, with a sense of who you are, through relationships with others; through in-between-ness of relationships, you construct yourself. Making meaning is the central way in which you form a sense of self, identity, and purpose. 
 
The second way you develop is obvious: you change over time. You make transitions over the course of your development which require you to make new meaning from experience. Transitions disrupt your sense of self. Life is motion, and the motion of development requires you to make meaning with each new life phase. The way in which you negotiate each transition in the life span can determine how well or how poorly you live into the new situation. 
 
Vocation, then, is Christian meaning making. It refers to the ways we “take in,” construct, reconstruct, critique, and identify what is significant in relationship to God and others. God’s call comes to use from birth till the end of our days in multiple and varied ways. You experience God’s call anew through particular developmental tasks that emerge in each part of the life span. 

​(From: The Stories We Live: Finding God's calling All Around Us. Kathleen Cahalan. Eerdmans, 2017.)

​Part 2. Exploring the Chapters of Our Life ​

God’s callings are multiple and varied in your life, emerging in different ways, given your age and the life tasks you task. Vocation is not static or linear, but dynamic, sometimes fluid and at other times more stable. It is complex and multifaceted and is not determined once and for all in your life. Across the life span, God calls us as infants to gaze and behold, as children to play, as youth to begin exploring identity, as young adults to ask big questions and dream big dreams, as adults to love and work, in later stages of adulthood to step back and then step back in, and in elder years to give and to let go. 
 
Image your life as the chapters in a book that is still being written. Using the chapters imagery, name the key chapters in your life that reflect stages—as a child, teenager, young adult, midlife adult, mature adult, older adult—and the transitions in your life—growing up, education and graduations, first job, changing career, first house/apartment, marriage, becoming a parent, raising children, becoming a grandparent, retirement, and more. 
 
Give each chapter a descriptive title that names your experience of calling at the stage or transition. For example: “Living into the call and challenges of being a parent” or “Embracing the joy of being a grandparent” or “Starting a new job.” 
 
Take time to complete the “Chapters of Life” activity in your Calling Journal

​Part 3. Reflecting on Callings Over Time

Now reflect on how you have experienced God’s calling in the different chapters of your life and how you have seen God’s callings emerge at different stages of their life.

How do you experience God’s callings at this age in your life?
 
Write your reflections on how God’s callings emerged at different stages of your life, and how you are experiencing God’s calling today. 

Closing Prayer

As I adventure with you today
be the compass that guides me,
the light that shines on my path,
the only one I follow.
As I adventure with you today
be the word that encourages,
the hand that reaches out,
each time I stumble
As I adventure with you today
let me glimpse our destination,
and appreciate the places
through which you lead me. 
As I adventure with you today,
be the strength I need to follow,
and as the day draws to a close
let me rest in your embrace. Amen. 

Faith and Worship:  http://www.faithandworship.com/prayers_Christian_calling.htm#ixzz5QbAbNlZn 
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution