Vocare

"Vocation" comes either from the old French vocacion, meaning "call, consecration," or directly from the Latin vocare "to call." Either way, blessed is the individual who carries on with a sense of divine calling. "Only those who decline to scramble up the career ladder are interesting as human beings. Nothing is more boring than a man with a career" (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956). A great chasm exists between vocation and occupation.

An encounter several years ago illustrates this well, especially because of the nurse I'll never know.  At the time, I was devoting some of my discretionary time to working with the local Baptist association, and I received a phone call one evening at the associational office from a most unusual caller. A man traveling by bus back home to Tulsa from a funeral in Junction had suffered a seizure and was in Providence Hospital for treatment.  His name was Billy. He said that he had accepted Christ in the hospital and wanted to speak with someone about how to get started right in his new Christian life. The hospital gave him our number. I agreed to see him, and in so doing learned about an inspiring sequence of events.  It seems that a hospital chaplain had left with him a small book concerning salvation written by Billy Graham. Later that day a nurse came to his room, saw the book on his bedside table, and asked if Billy had read it. Billy replied that he had but that he needed someone to explain it to him. Astonishingly, the nurse arranged to take her break at that moment and proceeded to lead Billy in giving his life to Christ in prayer. This was an unmistakable exhibition of vocation by the unidentified nurse-living out her calling to honor Christ through nursing.  I learned all of this from Billy as I dropped him off at the bus station, and he told me that his life had changed forever as the result of one anonymous nurse. God bless you Florence Nightingale, whoever you are, and God bless all who work and serve with God in mind.

"And whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by him." (Colossians 3:17, KJV)