Visit us at: 30 Good Minutes.org

         

"A Big Enough Life"
I once heard a story about a woman in her forties who had never been to college but she felt a calling to enter the ministry. Her mother pointed out to her that between college and seminary she would not be ordained until she was fifty-nine years old.

“Well, mom,” she said, “I’m going to turn fifty-nine no matter what. I may as well hit it doing what God is calling me to do.”

But in that calling church, when her story was told, it was heard by a man who had spent his adult life in banking, but had been miserable for the last decade. That story made him consider the new creation that might happen in his life, and today he has finished nursing school and he cares for patients with cancer in what was for him his calling to a new and different life.

Communities of faith are like that. Don’t join one unless you are willing to be changed. You always run the risk of being called by God into a bigger life.

Now, the world outside the church tells you to live a life big enough for yourself. But it’s in communities of faith that we hear a more compelling message: Live a life that is big enough for God. Life your life, and live it abundantly.

But to live a big enough life, you have to be open, and let the Spirit in. You have to allow God to meddle, and acknowledge that it’s not all about your small plans. God’s plans may be bigger and better.

Most of the world would disagree. Most of the world would say that where you are in life is a result of your own careful planning, hard work and deliberate endeavor. The world neglects, often, to mention birth order, class status and geography. And often in our vanity, we human beings ignore those things too, instead praising our own decision making power and good planning.

The general idea is that you are in charge of your own life, and once you start on a plan, you must stick to it. Not much room for calling in that, is there?

Instead, hear these words from the Gospel: “So again Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and bandits; but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate.’”

But sometimes we forget that Christ is the gate to a bigger life. Sometimes we let the world be the gate, or our social pressures be the gate, or our ambitions be the gate, or our neuroses be the gate, or our family baggage be the gate. The problem, there, is that all that may be a gate to somewhere but probably not the gate to a bigger and more abundant life.

In the affluent suburbs of Chicago where I serve as a minister, there are a lot of gates that lead you to smaller plans, not bigger plans. Let me give you one example. These days, the high school students in my church often apply to these colleges where they must apply not to the college as a whole, but to a particular major. It’s as if, at the age of 17, they can know exactly what course their lives will take. So then having done that, the pressure moves backwards.
And so then their high school extracurricular activities must then be geared, from the 9th grade on, toward making them appealing applicants not just to the college but to a particular department or major. The pressure then to have a plan and work toward it becomes intense.

Next thing you know, you are picking a plan, not based upon exploration, or risk, or calling, but you pick a plan based upon your likelihood of achieving it. And that is not a good thing for the world.

It seems that many things that used to wait until later, now begin so early, with 70 pound children strapping on these football pads in the second grade, to prepare for a game they are really way too small to play, all in the interests of being good enough or better than the next kid by the time they actually are the right size.

Consider all those pressures and plans for little ones, the foreign language lessons, the music, and the sports. These are good things in and of themselves, but they are so easily corrupted into the blasphemy of the life plan that comes too early. And usually the plan that gets set in stone too early is a plan that is just too small.

But it continues into adulthood, as people who dislike their jobs will complain that their lives are not all they hoped they would be. They complain but do nothing, with the resignation of a person who has no options.

What an irony, to hear that kind of talk from people here this country, where we live at the peak of the world’s economic pyramid. Sometimes these complainers are people who really do have the most, in terms of resources but also in terms of options, when you look at the scale of the whole world.

But they are acting and behaving as though they are locked in, as victims. This may be the tax of having so much. But what if, instead, they lived as though God were still speaking to them, calling them, to a more abundant life?

Could you risk making a change in your life, in order to have one that is big enough for God’s dream for you? Could you make more than just a personal transformation, more than just an individual blessing?

Because Jesus’ call to us to live abundant lives is actually a call for the transformation of the world, so that justice will roll down into every life. The big enough life cannot just be about individual happiness, or about personal growth. The abundant life needs to be big enough for everybody, so that all may eat at the heavenly banquet.

If the church cannot proclaim that, and proclaim it boldly, then we may as well just pack up and shut down, and turn over the sanctuary to the next SAT prep course, hand the whole thing over to career planners and head hunters, sign the deed for the building over to all those fearless defenders of the overdog and shelterers of the status quo, and just quit calling ourselves a church. Because if we’re not calling people into new and abundant life, not calling society into new and abundant life, and doing it regularly, we are not doing our job.
But of course, mercifully, in a world of plans and schedules, it is in church that you will hear Jesus saying wild things like this: “I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture.”

And then he goes on to say, as a warning that leading a big enough life is not going to be easy. He says: “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

So, watch out for the thief. Don’t let over planning, and over scheduling and over worrying be the thief that steals your life. Don’t even let family pressures, or self doubt, or fear be that thief. Because those things are actually too small to stand in the way of a big enough life.

For when you reach for that next big thing, you don’t do it alone, but you do it with the God who dreams of bigger things than we can ever imagine. You do it through Jesus, who came that we might have life and have it abundantly.

Conversation with Lillian Daniel

Daniel Pawlus: Lillian, thank you so much for joining us and sharing that message.

Lillian Daniel: Thank you.

Pawlus: You did a beautiful job of framing calling in terms of community. I wonder if we could talk about that a little bit. I know in your book you discuss that, but how can our faith communities help us find our personal calling and the calling of the community itself?

Daniel: This is a subject I love to talk about. It’s that churches need to remember that they are communities of calling and not just communities that call people into ordained ministry. Sometimes we have too small a definition and forget that when a community of faith is healthy, people are constantly questioning: How am I living my life? Am I worthy of the calling that God has placed with me? And that’s a sign to me—a marker—of a healthy church when you have people asking those questions all the time.

Lydia Talbot: You were wrestling with your own call to ministry, Lillian. Tell us about that bumpy road toward a more abundant life that you talk about.

Daniel: Well, I did struggle with my own call to ministry for a number of reasons. Partly, as a young woman I had never laid eyes on a woman minister in my life. So when I went to divinity school I was operating on the hunch they existed! But I had no proof until I got there. And again, you look out there and you think, “Oh, do I look like my own stereotype of a minister?” I pictured a man with gray hair, a beard and a deep voice and thought, “This can’t be what I’m meant to do!” But I really became convinced along the way that God calls us exactly the way we are and we don’t have to pretend to be something different.

Talbot: You were working with teens in Washington, D.C., and you were employed by U.S. News and World Report. Your father was a journalist in Viet Nam. You traveled widely and yet you say the church was that one constant anchor for you.

Daniel: Absolutely. By the way, I was also playing in a band and I broke the band up when I went to divinity school!

Talbot: Now, do your parishioners know you once played the bass guitar in a band?

Daniel: Well, yes, they are aware of that. But I kept it under wraps for the first couple of years. But, yes, part of what I explain all those interests to, though, is a healthy life of faith; a family and communities of faith along the way that encouraged me to dream and to not be locked into stereotypes or a life that is just too small.

Pawlus: Speaking of family, you made a wonderful point, I think, about children and pushing our children towards a calling too early. Do you want to talk a little bit more about that? I know it’s a real challenge for parents today.

Daniel: Boy, it really is, as the world seems to get more competitive. I really worry when I see young people who are so gifted in so many areas picking their calling based on the likelihood they’ll achieve it, playing it too safe. A lot of it comes from the parents, but a lot of it is the society in general. And, again, I think that’s where church might take a young person who is on one path and pull them into another venue. Music can be that arena of exploring an entirely different calling in your life. So I love that way in which the church is almost counter-cultural and revolutionary, underground, in this pressure to do just one thing.

Talbot: You have a compelling piece in the January 9th, 2007 issue of the Christian Century magazine called, “Secret Passage.” You’re performing a wedding and the groom used to run wild through the secret passage.

Daniel: Oh, yes! Yes. We’re always down in the Pilgrim Hall and every church has a dingy basement like our Pilgrim Hall. That’s where you wait on the day that you’re going to be married in your best. And the young men and women that I’ll be with down there always say, “You know, in youth fellowship, we used to run wild in this place!" As if I don’t know, right? And they would sneak through the secret passage that led into the church. They tell me these stories as though I’ll be shocked. Then I get to tell them, in the moment before they get married, we’re going to walk through that very secret passage, where who knows what mischief they got into when they were in high school! And that’s where they are going to step out the door into the front of the church and make their promises.

Talbot: Calvin and Abigail are your two children.

Daniel: Yes, they are.

Talbot: Now have they discovered that secret passage?

Daniel: They have discovered that secret passage and like all the children in the church, they point it out to me as though I have no idea it exists! Everyone assumes the pastor is clueless.
So like all pastors’ kids, they feel like they own the church.

Pawlus: You made a wonderful point in your message, too, about the gate as an analogy. How can we better find our own gates? What’s stopping us from reaching our calling or being more in tune with that?

Daniel: Well, the genius of Biblical imagery is so enormous, but to me the gate is such a powerful image because it flows both ways. So sometimes the gate is a barrier and sometimes the gate is what shows us the path we’re meant to go in. And I actually think that when people are stuck vocationally or stuck in a period of calling, that’s a very rich moment of being in the gate, because the thing that appears to be blocking us is actually perhaps the thing that, if we push through, is going to be exactly the path. So it’s a very rich time for practices of prayer and discernment and things like that.

Talbot: Lillian, break down for us the difference between calling and career.

Daniel: Oh, sure. Some of us are blessed to have a Venn diagram where the two overlap. I feel like that in the ministry, and I imagine what you do makes you feel that way, too. Career and calling come together. But not even in the ministry all the time. We all have work that we do to support our families and to earn an income. And then we have that God given passion within us where that passion meets the needs of the world in some way. I’m so aware that for so many Americans, work and calling do not go together and you’ve got people working 3 part-time jobs and trying to make ends meet. So we can’t assume that they are always going to go together, but when we have those moments where we can express our calling in our work, it is such a blessing.

Talbot: What’s the formula? What was it for you, to make one’s work an extension of one’s faith? I mean, to carry that sense of faith into one’s own job or vocation.

Daniel: Well, I think for some of us, we can’t imagine not doing that thing. So we are willing to make an economic sacrifice or to go to school or do other things to make it happen. You just cannot imagine doing anything else. And yet, even for me in the ministry, I have to be honest and say there are elements of the ministry that are clearly my calling and there are parts of it that are onerous and just hard work. Sitting through lengthy meetings about roof repair come to mind! And yet in the preaching moment, I feel like I’m in my calling. So we all have that trade-off and that balance.

Pawlus: In the minute we have left, do you want to share an inspirational nugget from your book, Tell Like it Is, that shows the transformation of your community coming together by that dialogue that you created?

Daniel: Sure. I have passion about the recovery the practice of testimony, where lay people share and talk about their faith in worship so that you’re not just listening to the pastor but hearing people tell real stories of their own calling and how God has moved in their lives. I’ve found that when you do that, the church explodes. It’s very exciting.

Talbot: And the word presence is so important. Incarnational in that sense.

Daniel: Right.

Talbot: I want to get back to your children and how we can convey the sense of faith, as you’re doing at the First Congregational Church of Glen Ellyn, Illinois. How are you talking to Calvin and Abigail about the Christian faith?

Daniel: Well, first we have to talk period to them about it. Not just people who are ministers talking to their children, but all of us have to carry that vocation into our parenting and into our mentoring of young people. Part of it goes back to a reluctance to talk about faith in general, I think, in a lot of our churches. So we have to break through that. Children are enormously interested in what we believe: What do you really think about heaven? What do you really think about calling? Pushing through that and just saying it is so important.

Talbot: And service to others.

Daniel: And service to others.

Pawlus: Thank you.

Talbot: Thank you, Lillian.
     

Home | Schedule |This Week | Sermons| Topics | Short Video | About | Print | Links | Contact Us | Donation