ŷ������

“That concept of vocation is rooted in a deep distrust of selfhood, in the belief that the sinful self will always be “self-ish�� unless corrected by external forces of virtue. It is a notion that made me feel inadequate to the task of living my own life, creating guilt about the distance between who I was and who I was supposed to be, leaving me exhausted as I labored to close the gap.

Today I understand vocation quite differently �� not as a goal to be achieved but as a gift to be received. Discovering vocation does not mean scrambling toward some prize just beyond my reach but accepting the treasure of true self I already possess. Vocation does not come from a voice “out there�� calling me to become something I am not. It comes from a voice “in here�� calling me to be the person I was born to be.”