In a thin book near the end of it, Frederick Buechner offers a beautiful insight regarding God’s will: “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”[1]
As we journey with God and God with us, a question eventually bubbles up from the seeker’s soul inquiring what does God want me to do? The quick and less helpful voice of our society, false self, or even self-interest will try to dismiss the question with a list of limitations. I am too busy already (and you may be too busy). I have nothing to offer God (you are encouraged to challenge that one). I will do something after I (fill in the blank).
I invite you to explore this question from another perspective. Again, Buechner is helpful here. He writes, “The kind of work God usually calls you to is the kind of work (a) that you need most to do and (b) that the world most needs to have done.”[2]
So, what kind of work do YOU most need to do? Grandiosity has no home here. Start where you stand. Perhaps you need to play with your children, clean a room or a space for study. Maybe you need to pull up a chair and listen to a friend or read a book. You are invited to be in your life and do the work you most need to do. Chances are particularly good that your world needs to have that work done.
God is efficient. As you do the work you most need to do – the needs of the world, hopefully, are met. One word of caution here: Please lift up your head and heart as you look around your home, your neighborhood, your church, for what you need most to do.
[1] Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A seeker’s ABC, (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1973), 119.
[2] Ibid., 118.