Visioning....

I'm reading "Visioneering..." by Andy Stanley.  There's nothing quite like reading a book about the process of visioning to make you think about your future and the direction your life is going.    The reasons why you do some things and not others also come up for contemplation.

It affirms the place where I find myself today, but in terms of Spiritual strategic planning, it makes me think about where I would find myself in 5 years.   It makes me listen to the nudges that I sense and to start praying over them.

Is it possible that I have a different destination to set off toward after I reach the one to which I am currently underway.   Maybe that's what this "waiting" is all about.  To sit in the quiet and take out the map and just look at other places people travel to.

While I sit in the quiet, there are also questions I have to answer: How long will my board term last? Will I renew my term? How long will I work at the church? At the school? What if other jobs come up?  At the school?  Outside the school?  Should I go back to school?   ....and so I just wait some more and wait for the questions to settle and sort themselves out.  One's brain could get tired.   And God holds it in His Hands.  He'll let me know when I need to know.    I just have to make sure I stay available.

Just a few days ago I had to decide about my board term.  Doing something like that makes you take an honest look at yourself.   I shared "It's neat to trace the path when I look at the "tools" that I find in my "toolbox": How the little things gave way to bigger things and how I find myself where I am today, doing the things I do. And I love what I am doing these days." I can't wait to delve into the tedious things of the campaign, after we get all the document writing out of the way."

So I look at the myriad of things that are on my list of things to do.   It's really busy, but today I am enjoying the challenge.  I look at all the different little things that are included in my job description and that somewhere along the line I was equipped for them.  Amazing how, unbeknownst to me, God was preparing me and has prepared me for this.  That I have certain interests and certain tendencies.   It makes me a firm believer that God creates us all for something special and He knows exactly what He's doing.  Never in a million years would I have envisioned this for myself but I've always known that He has a plan, a vision for my life.  When we make ourselves available, even when we're not sure where He's going with all of this, He will take us and continue to make us into the person He intends us to be.  He needs us to fill a special purpose.  Reminds of the apple post. 

I  was reading something by Frederick Buechner the other day about how your calling also shapes you to be the person God intends you to be and how wonderful it is when your vocation/calling touches what really moves you, your gladness.…

"Maybe that means that the voice we should listen to most as we choose a vocation is the voice that we might think we should listen to least, and that is the voice of our own gladness. What can we do that makes us gladdest, what can we do that leaves us with the strongest sense of sailing true North and of peace, which is much of what gladness is? Is it making things with our hands out of wood or stone or paint on canvas? Or is it making something we hope like truth out of words? Or is it making people laugh or weep in a way that cleanses their spirit? I believe that if that is a thing that makes us truly glad, then it is a good thing and it is our thing and it is the calling voice that we were made to answer with our lives."  (The Hungering Dark)

Cool.

I guess its neat to sit and think about it and even neater when you figure some of it out...


"Sometimes I sits and thinks and sometimes I just sits".  Satchel Paige