When I feel most alive … go ahead, take your shoes off!

I stumbled across another good podcast today: The Word Nerds - “A program about words, language, and why we say the things we do.” It’s put on by three high school teachers. It’s really an interesting show. Some of the favorite episodes I’ve listened to so far have been “Our Linguistic Pet Peeves”, “(Dis)comfort and Paralanguage”, “Snooty Foreignisms” , and “The Language of Love: Food, War, Fire.”

I have really enjoyed listening to this podcast. They hit on so many interesting distinctions and intricacies of speech and usage. If you are fascinated and interested in language and words like I am, you have to check this out.

If you have iTunes 4.9 or higher, you can subscribe to their podcast by clicking here and iTunes will automatically download each new episode (every Sunday night) and will automatically sync it to your iPod if you want it to.

So check it out!

I was reading in the book “The Heart of Mentoring” by David A. Stoddard today and came across this:

Regardless of age, most people look to their work to provide esteem, significance, and accomplishment. We each have an innate need to work. In mentoring young people, however, I have discovered that career is an even bigger issue for them because they are just starting out. Vocationally, they begin with a clean slate, and sometimes uncertainty about what they really are designed to do leads to a parade of trials — and errors. They want to know how to get established in their life’s vocation. But it’s more than finding a job that provides a sufficient level of financial compensation; they also want to do something that gives them a sense of meaning and fulfillment.

What we’re talking about is something I like to call passion, which one dictionary defines as ’strong feeling, either sustained or passing, for or about something or somebody.’ Another says passion is ‘a strong or extravagant fondness, enthusiasm, or desire for anything.’

He makes a really good point a few paragraphs later, that really struck me,

just because someone is good at what they are doing vocationally, that does not mean it fulfills their passion.

This hits home especially for me, because I feel like I am good at almost anything I put effort into, but I am not passionate about everything. I agree with his first statement that young people especially want to find a vocation where they can exercise their passion, not just make money. I don’t want a job where I hate my work and am not passionate about it. I want to work in a job I am excited about and passionate about. It’s not good enough for me to just have a job.

In the wake of a job interview that wasn’t all that great, and a job search that is seeming to yield no tangible results (no job offers yet), I have been humbled this week.

I am realizing that I am not “all that.” Sure, I walk into offices each week to interview with some potential employer and tell them how I am “all that” and more and why they should hire me (and I’m not lying about ANY of those things), but when you get right down to it, everything I do have has been given to me by God, and everything I will have in the future will come from Him. And that is humbling.

It is by God’s grace that He will provide me with a job and take care of me. I take comfort and trust in the truth of these verses:

Jeremiah 29:11 - “For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the LORD, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

2 Chronicles 16:9 - “For the eyes of the LORD run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show Himself strong on behalf of those whose heart is loyal to Him.”

2 Corinthians 12:9,10 - “But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”