Have you ever noticed how frequently we are defined by our job? Go to a party, start making small talk with people you meet for the first time and inevitably the question will come up, “What do you do?” They are not asking what you like to do in your spare time or if you have any particular hobbies. They want to know what your vocation is what you do for a living.Is that you? Is what you do in order to put food on the table and pay the rent an accurate symbol for who you are as a person? Does it account for the total of your characteristics, your needs, your desires and aspirations, your values, or what you believe? I would think not. Still, once the answer at the party is given, you become “an accountant”, “an attorney”, “a mason”, “a nursing assistant” or “a retailer” etc, etc. People use your job title to totalise you and, if they think of you again, they think, “so-and-so, the accountant… the attorney…the mason” and so on.A vocation is a person's employment or main occupation, and it can be regarded as particularly worthy and requiring great dedication. Other words for vocation are “calling”, “mission”, or “purpose”.While my vocation may or may not say much about me as a person, my calling does, and that is because it is linked to the One who has called me and the purpose for which I exist in this world.Jean-Louis Chrétien, a French phenomenological philosopher, claimed that one cannot perceive the call that someone or something has on him or her outside of the subjective experience of that call. That is, you cannot know your calling by anything other than the effect it has on you, the way it makes you feel, the thoughts that fill your head, the perspective it gives you about your place in the world and your relationship to other people, events taking place, and to the society in which you live.A calling fills a person with purpose so that that person is apt to say things like, “I know why I was born”, “I know what I must do”.Recently, I was talking with a friend, fellow writer, and psychotherapist who lives in Manhattan. We were talking about the process of writing, and I found myself saying this:“I came to the conclusion some time ago that God made me to write, and He has prepared me to write on the themes about which I do write. He has given me a place and a time in which to write, and He has given me a woman who is supportive of that and actually sees herself as part of this overall activity. So, here I am. This is what I was made for… Whenever I am not writing, I am squandering the gift of God. Now, just think of it. God gave me a beautiful place in which to live while I write, a minimum of distractions, and a meaningful living to support myself while I write. When the window of writing closes, when I have written all He had in mind for me to write… well, that is an interesting consideration. It will be over. So, in the meant time, I must write. It is what I was made for.”This sounds a bit like the vocation concept (I am a writer). Actually it is an avocation, because my primary means of support is as a clinical psychologist. Still, there is more to the calling to write than something else I do on the side that means a lot to me. It is more fundamentally related to the calling of God upon my whole life.There is a calling that God extends to people. He referred to it through the writer of the letter to the Hebrews when that writer said, “Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts…” If, in your being somewhere, you sense a kind of whispering possibility, a “what-if”, an impression that perhaps God is real, the thought that perhaps there is more to existence than what can be measured, and perhaps there really is a saviour. If you sense the call, you can squash it by ignoring what Philip Yancey referred to as “rumours of another world”, or you can listen to your heart and respond to your calling. This is what happened to me, and that calling is the more fundamental one that eventuated in a subsequent calling to write. I exist in this world as a believer and follower of Jesus Christ. It changed my self-concept. It corrected the course of my life. It gave me purpose and identity. I could not have been more affected if I had been in Israel over 2000 years ago and heard Jesus say, “Come. Follow me”.This kind of calling is related to another concept one often hears people speak about. The calling of an interesting object captures one’s sight one’s attention and imagination. The calling of one in authority captures one’s allegiance. The calling of God in Jesus is not simply to an attractive way of living in this world a spiritual adventure. This calling of God comes with a commission. People who have heard the call of God on their lives, live an expendable existence in this world, and they learn to keep alert for what God is doing in this world through them. There is never an unconnected event that takes place; everything has potential relevance to the kingdom of God.So, if you see me at a social gathering, and you ask me what I do, you might get the shorter and expected answer, but then again you might get the more authentic and longer answer: I am a child of God currently travelling through this world and working as a clinical psychologist and writer. God works through me to help people in this world because He loves them, whether they ever know it as such or not. I can see God working through others who are here in the same way. It’s who I am. It’s who they are. It is our calling.