Posted by Back when I was in theology school, they taught us the standard definition of “Providence”: God’s everyday, common activity in the world to accomplish His will, in contrast to the miraculous.
While miracles get most of the spotlight, I think Providence deserves more credit than we usually give it for the everyday outworking of God’s will for our lives.
It’s not really anyone’s fault, but I grew up with a limiting view of vocation and calling. “God’s will” was nebulous, single-minded, all-important, and somewhat elusive.
You were aiming your life at a tiny, tiny hole, and you were asked to do this at the ripe old age of 18 or 21. Which career? Which major? Which person to date? Which job?
Pressure mounted because it all seemed to rest on you. Yes, God was in charge of your life, but He wasn’t going to come down there to write your major on that college application. So get out the divining rod.
God’s directives for our lives are brilliantly simple and empowering (but not easy):
- Love God as hard as you can with everything in your being all the time
- Love your neighbor sacrificially, like you love yourself.
- Take the Gospel everywhere you go.
- Give your life to the ministry of reconciliation -spreading the healing effects of the Gospel into every institution, family, nation, industry.
In short, I’m able to work out all 4 of those commands in a variety of ways.
My own gifts and talents lead me toward certain actions or jobs because they fit my interests. I think God is pleased when we serve Him in any number of ways and enjoy Him via life. And I think God spends most of His energy directing us via the natural course of life events, not by writing us special messages in the sky. It’s His loving Providence, not the miraculous, that illuminates our pathway.
We need to free our children from the tyranny of the American dream. The world expects them to know by age 18 what they are good at and what kind of job they’ll do for 40 years. Really?!
Some kids are lucky enough to know by age 12 what they want to do with their lives. Great! They are fortunate.
But a well-educated human being who has developed her talents as well as strengthened her weaknesses will probably find herself sampling a variety of careers throughout life. Our world is too fluid to be otherwise…. and those of us who prepare teens for college or co-eds for life need to remember this.
I educate my students for life, not for their freshman year of college. The skills of critical reading, sharp thinking, clear communication, organization, resource management and the like — everything our upper school curriculum is crafted to instill in students — are LIFE skills. To “present every child complete in Christ” is to take the long view of their education, to invest in their humanity.
Image bearers might well end up on an assembly line … but their “productivity” in society does not determine their worth to humanity.
Springtime makes the think of graduation, rightly called “commencement” because our educational founders realized that school is not an end in itself.
We educate children to launch them like arrows into the battle of seeing the Kingdom take hold on Earth. Grace-full education polishes the natural grain in a child, buffs out the weaknesses, and sends them forth prepared with far more than intellectual knowledge.
Arrows can be aimed, but in the end they will fly according to the bent their Maker gave them.
Just:Words 