After I graduated from seminary, I joined the multiple staff of a large church in Sacramento, California. I grew up in Sacramento, so in one way it was like coming home. That church had been my home church before going away to seminary, and so in another way it was like coming home. Yet, in a more basic way it was not getting to “home” at all.Some say that “home” is where the heart is. That’s what some philosophers would say as well. They would say that need or interest colour one’s attitude, and that attitude is like a halo of interest around a person. If you are an artist then you see things in terms of colours, shapes, and composition. If you go into a large shopping mall, your artist’s attitude points you in the direction of an artist’s interests. You see things with the eye of an artist. Your horizon, all the things possible or that even enter the mind of an artist, allows you to think of possibilities that an artist might take advantage of in a shopping mall, and when you find a place like a crafts store, you walk in there and you feel “at home.” That’s because the crafts store feels like it belongs in your world. In fact it is one of your worlds. That sense of home is the combination of an attitude of interest and a horizon of possibility that results in a world of being. In one’s world, one says, “This is me.”I am a writer. There is a whole world of writing that opens up to me from time to time. In my world of writing are publishers, editors, and other writers. There is the excitement of potential projects, the creativity of fleshing out an initial idea, and the hard work of actually doing the writing. There is also the fascination with the finished product, because after a little while I cannot recall the drudgery part anymore, the text has grown cold, and it seems almost as if what I am reading was written by someone else. That’s when I can allow myself to say, “That was pretty good!”Into all this kind of thing attitude, interest, need, possibility and world one day while working as a minister of children at this very large church, my pastor, the Senior Pastor of the church, was in a conversation with me. I had been contemplating moving on, because as great as that very large church was, and as wonderful an experience as it had been to be on staff there (I had been ordained by that church), I had not felt that it satisfied my call to full-time Christian ministry. At that church I had been the Minister of Children, and I loved working with the children and their families, but when I felt called to ministry, it had been to the preaching ministry the preaching and teaching ministry. After four years on staff, I felt the need to find my own church. So, into that situation came this conversation between my pastor and me as I contemplated various opportunities, various places who were in need of a pastor.My pastor told me, “A need does not constitute a call.” It is remarkable to me how a person can affect you. That man was a large influence in my young life as a Christian, and then also as a young minister. His words a need does not constitute a call have remained with me, and they seem to apply to a number of situations.There are many, many people in need in this country. I find them daily, if not by the hour. Of course they come to me for help in my practice of clinical psychology, but I find them walking around Hamilton, riding the bus, visiting Dockyard or St George’s, or riding the ferry. The hospital is filled with them, and they are not always just the patients, because the staff also have needs. If a person had no way to self-regulate and was drawn to take care of every need that came his or her way, that person would exhaust themselves after a very short time.I am not called to meet every need. A need does not constitute a call. Back when I was contemplating where the Lord wanted me, I was not motivated to say “Yes” to every opportunity. I ultimately said “yes” to one place, because, as it were, it felt like home.Guidance from God in a manner of speaking is like discerning one’s next home. God works with the natural processes of the creatures He has created, and in human beings He works with these constructs of attitude (a sphere of interest), horizon (a sphere of possibility), and world (a sphere of being). When a person puts all these together he or she says, “This is me. This feels like home.” Put in more spiritual terminology, a person might say, “I feel called.”Called? It’s the sense that God has tapped one on the shoulder and whispered, “I want you to … “ (fill in the blank). On an experiential level it feels right, it feels like it fits, it’s inescapable because it feels like “home.” It’s in keeping with one’s citizenship in the Kingdom of God. In that sense it is home.It might involve going somewhere one has never been, doing something one has never done, and so it might involve the unfamiliar, but a person who is called, knows it, and the experience of the call is what makes the adventure under consideration feel like it’s part of one’s world.For a need to constitute a call it must fit with a person’s home-world. That is because guidance, which is a matter of spiritual discernment, will still involve an earthly perspective. If a human being is trying to discern the will of God, the only place that human being is going to come to know it is on earth in his or her own world. It’s where one’s home is united with one’s world and where a bit of heaven the kingdom of God emerges on earth.