Capon on writing

If writing wasn’t fun, I wouldn’t be doing it. Not for one years out of my twenty-five as a money-earning writer did I ever make a living out of it. If I were in it for the money, I would have gotten out of it long ago. But I didn’t. And not because writing is such unadulterated fun that every day I find myself chafing at the bit to head for my desk and romp my way through page after page of deathless prose. As I said, every vocation-avocation has its share of drudgery, and writing is no exception. There are, of course, days and even weeks when it goes well. But there are more that don’t: blank pages or blank computer screens are very blank indeed. Beginning a book can be hell; and writing a proposal for a book (writing about what you are going to write – which is not writing at all, but pure hot air) is the bottomless pit.

I have been in and out of the business of writing food pieces for magazines and newspapers; in, because editors like my work; and out, because those same editors moved on to other things. (You learn one thing as a professional writer: you may think you have a dependable relationship with, say the Times or Redbook; but when your editor leaves, the relationship disappears.

Pages 146/7 of Robert Farrar Capon's book, Health, Money, and Love and why we don’t enjoy them.

All callings are precious to God

Let every man abide in the same calling wherein he was called.  1 Corinthians 7:20

Charles H. Spurgeon

Some persons have the foolish notion that the only way in which they can live for God is by becoming ministers, missionaries, or Bible women. Alas! how many would be shut out from any opportunity of magnifying the Most High if this were the case. Beloved, it is not office, it is earnestness; it is not position, it is grace which will enable us to glorify God.

God is most surely glorified in that cobbler's stall, where the godly worker, as he plies the awl, sings of the Saviour's love, aye, glorified far more than in many a prebendal stall where official religiousness performs its scanty duties. The name of Jesus is glorified by the poor unlearned carter as he drives his horse, and blesses his God, or speaks to his fellow labourer by the roadside, as much as by the popular divine who, throughout the country, like Boanerges, is thundering out the gospel.

God is glorified by our serving him in our proper vocations. Take care, dear reader, that you do not forsake the path of duty by leaving your occupation, and take care you do not dishonour your profession while in it. Think little of yourselves, but do not think too little of your callings.

Every lawful trade may be sanctified by the gospel to noblest ends. Turn to the Bible, and you will find the most menial forms of labour connected either with most daring deeds of faith, or with persons whose lives have been illustrious for holiness. Therefore be not discontented with your calling. Whatever God has made your position, or your work, abide in that, unless you are quite sure that he calls you to something else.

Let your first care be to glorify God to the utmost of your power where you are. Fill your present sphere to his praise, and if he needs you in another he will show it you. This evening lay aside vexatious ambition, and embrace peaceful content.

From Charles Spurgeon's Morning and Evening Devotional, for the 27th June

Being present

The church, as it exists within the wide range of individual vocations in every sphere of social life (commerce, philanthropy, education, etc.), must be present in the world in ways that work toward the constructive subversion of all frameworks of social life that are incompatible with the shalom for which we were made and to which we are called. As a natural expression of its passion to honour God in all things and to love our neighbour as ourselves, the church and its people will challenge all structures that dishonour God, dehumanize people, and neglect or do harm to the creation.

James Davison Hunter
To Change the World

Vocation

When I was in high school I thought a vocation was a particular calling. Here's a voice: "Come, follow me." My idea of a calling now is not: "Come." It's ... what I'm doing right now, not what I'm going to be. Life is a calling.

- Rebecca Sweeney, an American who held a variety of jobs, including six years as a nun