“Life is like a box of chocolates.”
The famed line from “Forrest Gump” has become something of a mantra for our culture. Life is like a box of chocolates. You may not know what you’re getting out of it, but whether it’s filled with coconut or caramel, it’s still chocolate.
As problematic as that worldview is, the bigger problem arises when we as Christians begin applying that principle to our faith. More and more, we have been equating God’s calling with a box of chocolates. From the moment we’re conceived, we’re continually presented with a sampler box of chocolates. Beginning in the womb, life events provide both guide-stones and challenges to the glory of who God created and calls us to be.
Each piece of chocolate is something we can use to see the eternal impact our lives can be to make a difference in the world. At first, all we may see on the tray are “chocolates” like volunteering in a soup kitchen, working with at-risk youth, or ministering to the ailing. It’s a beautiful tray of chocolate, because going to a soup kitchen is good and lovely and needs to be done. But this tray only has a few pieces of chocolate.
We’re often taught, “Here are the acceptable things to do. These things need to be done. Pick one.”
That’s where I found myself, I was doing just what I had been taught, but I had a deep hunger to do more. I was wrestling and crying out to God, “What is wrong with me? What is missing from my life?”
I had never heard a sermon that told me I shouldn’t settle for checklist Christianity. I had never been told there was more for me than those preselected pieces of chocolates.
Settling for living a clean life is not enough. God has designed each of us to fit a unique role in His Kingdom. When you aren’t fulfilling that role, you will feel like something is drastically missing.
Jeremiah 20:9 says, “If I say, ‘I won’t mention Him or speak any longer in His name His message becomes a fire burning in my heart, shut up in my bones. I become tired of holding it in, and I cannot prevail.'” We aren’t usually taught to have that type of passion for our calling. We aren’t taught to seek our unique niche in the Kingdom or to find what or who God is calling us to be specifically; uniquely.
We each need to find our vocation in the Kingdom. It’s important to understand our vocation is different than our profession. We can work our whole lives in professions such as receptionists, doctors or teachers; however, working in a certain profession does not constitute our vocation in His Kingdom.
Our vocation is the unique dream that God gave to us and what we must do fulfill the Kingdom and change the world.
I promise you, you’re not going to find that in a box of chocolate.
Kimberly L. Smith is the president and co-founder of Make Way Partners, the only indigenously operated relief organization in [North] Sudan and South Sudan providing anti-trafficking efforts to the most vulnerable orphans and former slaves. Smith is also the author of the award-winning book Passport through Darkness, which chronicles much of her experience in Sudan. For more information on Kimberly L. Smith and Make Way Partners, please visit www.makewaypartners.org.
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