What Next?
University was fast drawing to a close. The clear path of education that had been so easy to follow was coming to an abrupt halt, and uncharted territory lay ahead. Like me, you may have imagined being more energised by the new world of possibility, but when it arrives it can feel threatening. Looking ahead to the great unknown, only one question remained:
‘What next?’
Maybe you are asking that question right now. Maybe you’ve been asking it for a while. And if you’re not asking it, it is likely that this well-meaning question is coming at you from all sides: from friends, parents, parents of friends and friends of parents. ‘What’s next?’ is a courageous question, but it can also provoke feelings of displacement and confusion: Where do I go? Am I stuck? Shouldn’t I be moving forward by now?
Learning to wait
It was around this time that I felt God reveal to me some of his plans for my life. In an ordinary moment, while I was reading alone in the community house I was living in shortly after graduation, I became aware of God’s calling growing in me. There was no angel, no audible voice, no burning bush; just a sense within my being that I had something more to offer students. It was like being on a mountaintop on a cloudless day.
Calling can have these great moments of clarity, but I find they are rare. More often we need time and space to recognise the thoughts and questions God is stirring in our hearts. Even after this ‘mountaintop’ moment, I found myself back in the valley of waiting and confusion as I was learning that cultivating calling takes a great amount of patience and a willingness to let our longings grow and take shape.
It was on an October afternoon, while I was sitting in a fireside chair, that God revealed more of the call he had placed on my life. Though the mountaintop experience didn’t last long, and everyday life began again, I felt different. I’d touched something that I couldn’t un-hear, un-see or ignore. It had become etched in my mind’s eye, as though I had looked for a fraction of a second too long at the sun, and even though my eyes were turned away or shut tight, the heat spot still remained in my vision. I knew at that moment that my big questions, such as, ‘What would it take to disciple a whole generation of students?’ weren’t just my questions; these were seeds that God had planted in me and was encouraging to grow.
You might be able to identify with similar ‘sticky thoughts’ – questions and dreams that refuse to let go and keep hanging around, inviting you to muse on them. Have you noticed them? Have you written them down or uttered them out loud? Who could comprehend the ideas and callings that start with a small thought? Capturing these moments of clarity is important. These lingering impressions are so vital if we are to persevere into more and, as we shall explore, calling tends to be incubated in ordinary places, tested in dark places and realised in unlikely places.
