Where Calling Meets Burden

Notice in reading Paul’s letter to the Romans how he was called to be an apostle to the Gentiles but how he also carried a God-given and constant burden for his own people by origin, the Jews.(Romans 9 v 2-3)Between the two, his calling and his burden, both which came from God, lay the great scope of his vision for the kingdom of God. It was an all-encompassing vision. He was focused on his calling but not limited or narrowed by it, thanks to his burden. Neither was he confused by the burden though it concerned a different people than those of his calling. Yet, ultimately he knew it was one people, one faith. This was some of the width and the length and the depth and the height of the love of God pulsing in the heart of a human being. Maybe it is becoming so with each of us as well. Each has a calling but each also has a burden which need not confuse us though it be different from the calling. In fact it can greaten the work and broaden the scope of God’s purpose for our lives, knowing that the calling is His voice from a certain direction, Who also “shapes the the back to the burden, and the burden to the back.” We have to quiet our own voices to hear his voice calling (vocation), we have to unburden ourselves of the burdens of our own making to be better able to bear God’s burden.