Blog 568 – 03.11.2017

Our Calling

What is our calling, our purpose in this life? When I was a young man I felt a calling to be a preacher, a pastor. Because I did not have the money for college I answered a call to be a soldier for three years. Then I thought I heard a call to be an elementary school teacher so I enrolled in a university in their elementary education bachelor degree program. I got side tracked dropped out. Then I thought I felt a calling to be a steam plant operator so I enrolled in a student/work program with the Tennessee Valley Authority, TVA, to train to be a steam plant operator. While at the TVA steam electrical generation plant in Gallatin, Tennessee I attended church on Wednesday nights at a church in Nashville. There I met a beautiful young girl who was planning to attend Gulf Coast Bible College in Houston Texas in the fall of that year. I was driving back to Chattanooga, my home town, every weekend to work in a little church in Red Bank, nearby. I still was trying to follow the calling to teach and to preach.

Three or four months in to the Student Generator Plant Operator training program I decided that a life of swing shifts in a Generator Plant just did not appeal to me so I quit intending to go back to Chattanooga and see if I could figure out a way to follow that pretty girl to Bible College. I had to go to the Veterans Affairs, VA, office in Nashville for an interview and a batteries of test to get permission to use the remainder of my VA schooling benefits for Bible College. Since all the testing seemed to showed that my interests and abilities pointed to a career in social work they granted me permission so I applied and was accepted to start at GBC in January. That was just one semester behind the pretty Nashville girl who by the time I arrived was already engaged to marry a handsome young man who was training to be a medical missionary. A a triple threat – handsome, doctor, and missionary so I concluded the pretty face was only meant to help lead me to a place where I could prepare to fulfill my calling. After three years of Bible College, and working full time to support myself and a new wife I figured maybe I could start fulfilling that calling at that same little church in Red Bank as their Associate Pastor. The little church could not pay me but I could work and so could my wife so we began our very brief career in the Christian ministry.

Before a year was out she had left me, we separated after that, and divorced a few months later. A year or so later I moved back to Houston, Texas to be a part of a larger church. Got recharged and then moved to Cleveland, Tennessee where I cashed in the only thing I had of any monetary value, a whole life insurance policy, and tried for several months to get a little church started in the home of a kind older lady who had dreamed of a church like hers in Cleveland. After three months and having had to go back to work full time to support myself and even then to have to move back in with my parents I gave up on the building a church in Cleveland idea. It all sounds pretty crazy to me now. Cleveland, Tennessee had no shortage of Christian churches then or now.

I shared that bit of my story to introduce this idea of a calling or a purpose for our lives. I have said before that I think our lives are like a dream, a dream we get to help design by our attitudes, our thoughts, our words, and our deeds. So many choices, so many possibilities, and we get to have a say in it all. I used to be embarrassed by all of my missteps but I am no longer because for all the apparent mess that my life has seemed so often and may even yet at times, my life has been a wonderful adventure. It seems like in all of it that I have just been trying my wings, learning how to trust the air, the Spirit, to hold me up. You see that is I believe our true calling – to soar. Not just to be alive but to thrive. Not just to try and to cry, but to fly.

Your friend and fellow traveler,
David White