Pay Attention & Wait | Reflections by Fellow Gen Charles '22

I haven’t been doing much deep thinking lately. I’ve been caught up in normal school life and fun activities, classes and work, that I forgot to check in regularly, both with God and with myself. 

When I was fifteen, I started journaling. My journals were filled with the typical teenage angst mixed in with questions about God and what I should do with my life and who I wanted to become. And in some ways, my current journal is the same. Or at least it should be. I still have questions about God and who I want to be, but I haven’t been asking them. 

I haven’t set aside the time to settle down and put my finger on what’s going on deep inside me. Part of that is busyness and how I don’t want to miss anything as a fourth year (because FOMO). The other part of it is fear. There are some questions we don’t ask because we’re afraid of the answer. Calling is a hard thing to think about. It’s sort of amorphous. Maybe I’m not quite sure of the definition of calling. For me, in some sense, it’s a deeper longing. A long lasting desire that doesn’t bend to the whims of time and circumstance. And for people like me, that’s hard to figure out. You have to learn to (and be willing to) strip away the noise—what you are told to desire, what you feel you should desire, what you even believe you are allowed to desire. 

Strip it all away and get to the root of what is beneath the surface, hiding behind the muck to get to calling. That’s where God comes in. He lovingly calls us out of hiding, out of our misconceptions of what life should be and asks us to trust him into what he can make it. It’s tempting to chase after the answer of What is my calling? that we forget the one who is doing the calling.

While working towards calling (or stumbling into it) is important, I’ve neglected the more important thing: to pay attention to God. The gift of time and attention is what we long for in our deepest relationships. And though relationships also include giving gifts and affirmations and are about joy and sorrow, they boil down to presence. To sacrifice time and energy in other pursuits for the greater reward of being present together. This is God’s call to me, and I suspect for you too.  That I wouldn’t chase answers but that I would pay attention to him and trust that he will lead me where he wants me to go. 

Paying attention goes hand in hand with waiting. Lingering long enough to watch something happen. Focusing my gaze for a particular glimpse. It’s enticing for me to take things into my own hands and start building a list of jobs to apply to and contacting everyone I know about what they think I should do. It’s a greater act of faith to sit and be attentive to God. To watch and wait as he writes my story. To pay attention to this God who calls me his beloved and walks with me wherever he leads. That’s my calling for today.