Your job is not your vocation.
Everyone hungers for work that has meaning and purpose. But what gives
work meaning? Vocation, or "calling," is the answer Protestant
Christianity offers: each person is called by God to serve the common
good in a particular line of work. Your vocation, evidently, might be
almost anything: as a nurse, a wilderness guide, a calligrapher, a
missionary, an activist, a venture capitalist, a politician, an
executioner... Yet, as Will Willimon writes in this issue, the New
Testament knows only one form of vocation: discipleship. And
discipleship is far more likely to mean leaving father and mother,
houses and land, than it is to mean embracing one's identity as a
fisherman or tax collector.
This issue of Plough focuses on people who lived their lives with
that sense of vocation. Such a life demands self-sacrifice and a
willingness to recognize one's own supposed strengths as weaknesses, as
it did for the Canadian philosopher Jean Vanier. It involves a lifelong
commitment to a flesh-and-blood church, as Coptic Archbishop Angaelos
describes. It may even require a readiness to give up one's life, as it
did for Annalena Tonelli, an Italian humanitarian who pioneered the
treatment of tuberculosis in the Horn of Africa. But as these stories
also testify, it brings a gladness deeper than any self-chosen path.
Also in this issue:
- Scott Beauchamp on mercenaries
- Nathan Schneider on cryptocurrencies
- Stephanie Saldaña on Syrian refugee art
- Peter Biles on loneliness at college
- Phil Christman on Bible translation
- Michael Brendan Dougherty on fatherhood
- Insights on vocation from C. S. Lewis, Thérèse of Lisieux, Mother
Teresa, Eberhard Arnold, Dorothy Sayers, Jean Vanier, and Gerard Manley
Hopkins
- poetry by Devon Balwit and Carl Sandburg
- reviews of books by Robert Alter, Edwidge Danticat, Matthew D.
Hockenos, Amy Waldman, and Jeremy Courtney
- art and photography by Pola Rader, Dean Mitchell, Mark Freear, Timothy
Jones, Pawel Filipczak, Mary Pal, Harley Manifold, Sami Lalu Jahola,
Marc Chagall, and Russell Bain.
Plough Quarterly features stories, ideas, and culture for people
eager to put their faith into action. Each issue brings you in-depth
articles, interviews, poetry, book reviews, and art to help you put
Jesus' message into practice and find common cause with others.
