Growing Edge
January 1, 1999
Our self-help culture regularly makes best sellers of books that promise "20 Days to Iron Abs" or "7 Steps to Inner Peace." Two-week diets and 30-day money-back guarantees assail us, and we buy. Why?
Beneath our gullibility lies a pervasive discontent and uncertainty about why we are here.
As Os Guinness writes: "We have too much to live with and too little to live for."
The Call takes on this dilemma without resorting to formulaic answers. Quite the opposite, Guinness welcomes the mystery and wonder of a calling. He bids us set aside hopes of a quick vocational fix and join him in reflecting on "the many-splendored truth of calling." He divides the book into 26 reflections and suggests we read no more than one a day.
These reflections as well as an amazing number of quotes and stories invite us to remember the truth of who God created us to be. This is not new truth, but deep truth that has been discovered and forgotten time and time again.
It is truth awash in grace. "We start out searching, but we end up being discovered. We think we are looking for something; we realize we are found by Someone." There can be no calling without a Caller, Guinness asserts, and he leaves no doubt about the identity of the One who calls. Each chapter but the last ends: "Listen to Jesus of Nazareth; answer his call."
This simplicity, though, does not belie the need for the book. "To be sure," Guinness says, "calling is not what it is commonly thought to be. It has to be dug out from under the rubble of ignorance and confusion. And, uncomfortably, it often flies directly in the face of our human inclinations. But nothing short of God's call can ground and fulfill the truest human desire for purpose."
The stories Guinness tells draw one in and lend ...
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