Engage

Our Deep Gladness

In Let Your Life Speak, Parker Palmer quotes Frederick Buechner saying that vocation is "the place where your deep gladness meets the world’s deep need".  To answer the question of what the world’s deep need is relatively simple, but to answer where are deep gladness is requires a bit more work.

In Let Your Life Speak, Parker Palmer quotes Frederick Buechner saying that vocation is "the place where your deep gladness meets the world’s deep need".  To answer the question of what the world’s deep need is relatively simple, but to answer where are deep gladness is requires a bit more work.
Our life speaks to us as we live it, as we hurt and as we celebrate, as we weep and as we laugh.  It speaks to us as we lie still and as we dance, as we grieve and as we rejoice.  It speaks to us when we are alone with God and when we are with others and God.  It speaks to us in our living room and in a foreign place.  It speaks to us through life and through death. 
Sometimes our deep gladness comes in glimmers and other times our deep gladness so overwhelms us that we cannot believe that it is real.  What is your deep gladness and how did you find it?
God’s got plans for us, not just for our salvation but also for service.  So often we hear Ephesians 2:8-9 quoted and the thought that Paul was expressing remains unfinished.  Ephesians 2:8-10 reads,

"For by grace you are saved through faith, and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God; it is not from works, so that no one can boast. For we are his workmanship, having been created in Christ Jesus for good works that God prepared beforehand so we may do them."

Why have some of us not found our deep gladness?  Are we afraid of what we’ll find?  Are we being lazy in the Christian life?  Are we satisfied with the status quo or a "safe" way to serve God?  Finding out deep gladness might require some life change or getting to our deep gladness might take us through valleys we don’t want to walk through.  Maybe some of us have found our deep gladness but it has been stifled and suffocated by others. 
The needs of the world, of our families, our friends, the foreigner or foe is easily seen but only when we find our purpose do we realize how we can truly meet their deep need.