At one point or another in life, everyone asks, What am I here for? Not the larger question of universal purpose (What is human or world history for?), but rather the specific question of individual human callings. In other words, what makes us as humans made in the image of God not interchangeable with one another? Why is one a writer and the other a banker? Why is one a farmer and the other a soldier? Are such decisions made as a result of happenstance or merely environmental conditions, or do they speak to something deeper occurring in the heart of the person?

Calling: A Biblical Notion

The Scriptures speak of many kinds of callings. God summoned people to hear what He was saying to them, sometimes in a special way, as in the case of the young prophet Samuel (1 Sam. 3), and sometimes in a general way, as in the case of the prophets’ calling to the people, “Hear the word of the Lord!” There was also the very particular calling that was reserved for prophets in the Bible, an event that typically involved the Lord’s addressing the prophet from the divine assembly and commissioning him for the prophetic task. For example, the calling of Isaiah in the temple included all of the major elements of a prophetic calling: a vision of the heavenlies, interaction between the heavenly beings and the Lord, the prophet’s reluctance, the granting of a sign, and the clear prophetic message that is meant for the people (Isa. 6). Other prophets received their callings to the prophetic office in a similar fashion: Ezekiel was called while in exile, and the Apostle Paul was called on the road to Damascus—a calling he referred to throughout his ministry as proof of his legitimacy as an Apostle.

However, a true calling need not be extraordinary, even in the examples from Scripture. For instance, David was chosen by God to be Israel’s king even though the prophet Samuel did not perceive in the boy the obvious physical attributes that he would have expected in a monarch. The Lord, however, “looks on the heart” (1 Sam. 16:7), and David’s inner faithfulness credentialed him for the throne in a way that Saul’s unbelief did not. Even so, years passed between David’s calling and his ascent to the throne, and this created an opportunity for David to be prepared for the calling that God had put on his life. As a shepherd, young David learned the basic skills needed to lead and protect a flock (shepherding is a common analogy for kingship in the Old Testament). He also learned to trust in the Lord to be faithful to His promises to him, and this trust in the Lord provided the fortitude David needed in his battle with Goliath, an event in which David behaved in a manner fitting of a faithful king-champion, in stark contrast to Saul’s decidedly unkingly behavior. As a court musician, David became intimately familiar with Saul’s erratic behavior and the operation of Israelite statecraft, and he likely honed his art as Israel’s poet and key author of many psalms. All these stages provided moments in David’s life in which he pursued his calling as Israel’s second king. We should be careful not to make stark distinctions between his job at any given time and his calling as a whole. His calling was organically worked out over the course of his life, so we can say with some confidence that the young David among the shepherds was faithfully pursuing the call God had placed on his life.

The story of Esther draws our attention to another aspect of divine calling that is particularly relevant to us today. In this story, Esther responded to an opportunity to ascend to the highest levels of the Persian Empire. She was naturally gifted with physical beauty and intellect, and this gifting provided her with an opportunity to join the king’s inner circle. The particularity of Esther’s call, however, didn’t become obvious until the rise of Haman and his plot to exterminate the Judean refugees. Her cousin Mordecai gave a definition of human calling when he encouraged Esther that she had been made “for such a time as this” (Est. 4:14). She was the one whom God had called to deliver His people.

The book of Esther is notable among the books of the Bible because it is the only biblical book that does not explicitly mention the Lord. This absence of reference to the divine has the powerful effect of giving the reader a sense of the difficult world of God’s people under Persian rule at a time when the typical trappings of biblical faith were not as evident as they were in preexilic Judah. But the lack of explicit naming of God also illustrates what perceiving a call looks like in our contemporary world. More often than not, Christian calling is a matter of making decisions out of our own personal gifting, our personal interests and goals, wise counsel of those around us, and the opportunities that arise over the course of our lives.

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