This Must Be The Place
Do you ever get fixated on the future? Admittedly, I’ve spent much of my life looking ahead.
A few years ago, I moved to the Philippines for three months. The first night in my new apartment, alone and very homesick, I downloaded an app for counting down the days until I left. For the first week, I looked at it every day, constantly looking forward to the date of my return flight. As the weeks passed, I made friends with my local coworkers and started to love my job at the new office. I tried tons of Filipino food, found a good church a few blocks away, became a regular at my favorite neighborhood coffee shop, and often went running with my roommate at the park down the street. Even still, every morning I opened my countdown app to see how many days remained.
To this day, the Philippines tops the list of my favorite countries. Their Department of Tourism has a slogan: “It’s more fun in the Philippines.” I found that to be undeniably true. But I spent most of my time there looking beyond it. How sad is that?
I am a proponent of clear and direct communication: no games, no hints, just give it to me straight. It is for this reason I dislike the word “calling,” which I find elusive and tangled. For several years, it led me to believe there was some perfect job God had created for me to use all of my favorite skills and abilities, constantly keep me engaged, and be absolutely fulfilling all the time. I just hadn’t found it yet. In reality, even my dream job eventually made me wake up one morning and sigh, “Monday again?”
Jim Elliot, missionary and martyr, didn’t write, ‘Wherever you’re called, be all there.’ He wrote, “Wherever you ARE, be all there.” Wherever you happen to be, wherever you find yourself, be present there. If we spend our days focused ahead, searching for a calling, that perfect job, that perfect city, or even that perfect person, we will never find it.
Maybe subconsciously you’re hoping, like I was, that when you find your calling, you’ll finally be content. You will have arrived at last and you’ll know it. I thought returning home from the Philippines would feel like that—arriving back in my home culture and living in a familiar space. It didn’t. Instead, I moved back into my old room, unpacked my suitcases, and very quickly had no clue what to do with myself. Six months post-grad with no job. Trying to find contentment, fulfillment, or wholeness in anything but Jesus Himself will end up feeling just like that: a stupendously anticlimactic letdown.
But, God was gracious. He knew I had been thoroughly humbled, and the week of Christmas I landed a job as a grant writer, working on hurricane relief programs overseas. The dream job had finally arrived.
For the first seven months, adrenaline skyrocketed, and everything was fresh and fascinating to me. I was discovering how to live in a new country, experiencing another culture, and drinking from a firehose of knowledge at work. Right around month number eight, however, I woke up one morning with zero desire left to go into the office. The job was no longer new. It certainly wasn’t sunshine and rainbows anymore, and the disillusionment hit hard. I thought I had arrived. I thought I’d found my calling that was perfectly fulfilling until one day, it wasn’t anymore.
The Lord, in His inexhaustible kindness, met me in that season of disenchantment. He brought wise friends and mentors along to advise and guide me, and is continually reminding me to find fulfillment in Him, instead of my work.
Yelena, our former Editor-In-Chief and founder of Tirzah Magazine, has a short devotional called “Thy Will Be Done” available here on the website, in which she writes, “You find your calling not in what you do, but why you do it.”
If you believe God is sovereign, if you truly believe He is powerful enough to use ALL things together for your ultimate good and are seeking after Him in love—you can bet that wherever you find yourself in this very moment is exactly where He wants you. Surely, this must be the place.
John Muir, often referred to as the Father of the National Parks, was raised in the Scottish Presbyterian church and wrote:
“All the wild world is beautiful, and it matters but little where we go, to highlands or lowlands, woods or plains, on the sea or land or down among the crystals of waves or high in a balloon in the sky; through all the climates, hot or cold, storms and calms,
everywhere and always we are in God's eternal beauty and love. So universally true is this, the spot where we chance to be always seems the best.”
He was talking about being outside in creation, but shouldn’t we be able to say the same as followers of Christ? Wherever we chance to be, whether a lifeless cubicle, rush hour traffic, a meadow filled with wildflowers, at home surrounded by friends, or living abroad, if our calling is to love God and make Him known, shouldn’t every spot be the best?
Colossians 3 is one of my favorite passages in scripture. The NIV titles this chapter, “Living as Those Made Alive in Christ,” and Paul lays it out so clearly:
“And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him” (Col. 3:17).
What greater calling could there be?
Of course, it is hardly that simple in practice. I still catch myself hyper-focusing on the future…almost every day, but I’ve not used a countdown app since my time in the Philippines. And I never will. Daily, I am learning to follow reminders from the Lord to be all here. Because every day, mundane or even sorrowful as it is, remains a gift from God and should be treasured as such.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Claire Zasso was born and raised in California with many books and mountain air. Currently, she works for a Christian international relief organization, supporting hurricane recovery programs. She loves coffee, scuba diving, leading worship with her guitar, hiking in the Sierra Nevadas, jamming to classic rock, and showing others the freedom found in knowing Jesus.