Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Barbara Brown Taylor on Discernment

Thomas Long shared this story on 30 Good Minutes:

The Christian writer, Barbara Brown Taylor, tells in one of her books about a time in her life when she was struggling mightily with a sense of call. She simply could not figure out what it was that God wanted her to do and be. Did God want her to be a writer? Did God want her to be a priest? Did God want her to be a social worker? Did God want her to teach? She simply didn’t know. And in her frustration and exasperation, one midnight, she says, she fell down on her knees in prayer and said: “Okay, God. You need to level with me. What do you want me to be? What do you want me to do? What are you calling me to do?” She said she felt a very powerful response, God saying, “Do what pleases you. Belong to me, but do what pleases you.”

She said it struck her as very strange that God’s call could actually touch that place of her greatest joy, that she could be called to do the thing that pleases her the most.

Source: Thomas Long, "Where You Never Expected to Be", Program #5004, 30 Good Minutes, First air date October 22, 2006.