Meet the team! Starting on the left is the best team lead at impact, Taylor! Followed by us Fellows: Louci, Lilyanah, Kix, Logan, Genevieve, and Caleb. We served breakfast last semester and look forward to taking on an entirely new job here with communications!
In this final season of our time here, we are learning to number our days and preparing for the life that awaits us around the corner! Matt Dee has been leading us through vocation and calling this week. How to discern ways the Lord might communicate his will for us, and the reality that sometimes he opens multiple doors and to our chagrin says one of the scariest things possible, “You chose.” This has provided space for much-needed questions and fruitful conversations and proved to be a fervent light, allowing clarity to be found when we had felt like we were wandering through the fog. Matt Dee has shown us that vocation is not exclusively your job/career but includes your role as a sibling, neighbor, spouse, volunteer in youth ministry, and most importantly, a follower of Christ. It isn’t simply your profession but layers of life for you to be a branch overflowing with life from the everlasting vine.
During the talks about vocation, we touched on God’s will and how different degrees of his will can be expressed to us. Everything in this life is within His sovereign will, and all things to his glory – through obedience to His word are in his moral will. Still, sometimes we stumble upon his specific will at a crossroad that, much like Jonah’s story, allows us to see a more evident and implicit call. During these talks, we uncovered some of the richness and depth unmissable by the interworking of our personal qualities that could give us a peek into the direction the Lord may have for us to serve and flourish with a glad heart. We also reckoned that sometimes we might think we know where we’ve been asked to go, but question it along the way! Matt Dee gave an illustration where we can see our path clearly in the light – but while walking on the path, we hit fog and lose our place. He invited us to see how in these moments our faith is all that we have to rely on – trusting that what we saw when in the light is true even when things get a little hazy.
Some of you may wonder – what do those of us do that don’t feel any call? Am I missing out on what the Lord has for me? When I learned at the beginning of the week that this was the topic I would be responsible for, I scoffed, “You’ve got to be kidding!” Turns out the Lord knew(as he does) it would be good for me to meditate on vocation and calling because I don’t have any vocational plans – nor do I feel the Lord leading me in any specific direction. The fruit of this reflection was realizing that I have a direction founded on my identity in Christ. Moving forward, and in my next season, I will focus on what I do know, what the living Word proclaims every day. I am to love the Lord with all my heart, soul, and mind. Not only that, but I am to share the love, rooted in and sustained by my perfect and loving God. With my neighbors – every person I pass every day – treating them with the love, care, and consideration I would show myself. It isn’t every day that the Lord steps in, calling you to a new vocation or direction, but I can rest knowing the Lord holds the future; this is enough direction for today.
His will be done,
Kix Reinhardt
Class XIX Fellow