I was in conversation with a friend yesterday over a cup of coffee. We got talking about life and how walking is a metaphor for how we journey in life. What does the ground feel like under our feet on the pathways of life? Often we walk on hard paths - the same paths everyone else has walked on before, pathways that have been packed down - and so walking seems pretty easy. But from the Jesus' metaphor of the soils, not much grows on hard paths.
When our walking is frustrated it is often because the soil beneath our feet is not hard anymore, its soft and so every step takes an effort to move forward. We get frustrated when our forward movement is impeded and we try to get out of this kind of soil as fast as we can in order to find a hard path again. But this kind of soil in the parable of the soils (cf. Matthew 13) Jesus says is the kind of soil in which life takes root.
As followers of Jesus we are called to walk in the Spirit. I think this is difficult because we want to do the walking and walking in the Spirit requires our being sensitive to the leading of the Spirit. When we are cruising along the hard pathways, we're in control - who needs the Spirit. But when life slows down, moving forward is bogged down, step taking requires effort - maybe then we can be most open to the Spirit in our lives. The soil we most despise because it slows us donw, is the soil that something can take root in, we can take root in, soil in which the Spirit of God can produce something in our lives.
We talk alot about making a living and we often think about our being Christian while we make our way in the world, while we make a living. But I am beginning to think differently about what it means to follow after Jesus. Could it be that our primary calling is to be persons who are open to the Spirit of God, to be instruments of the Spirit working in the world and our jobs, etc are secondary to that calling. Could it be we are called to be the people of God in such a way that our jobs, careers are merely the contexts in which we live out lives which are open to the Spirit of God. So for example, if someone was a plumber, maybe it is not about them going to their job and do what they do, and then also think about how they are to be a Christian in this context, but rather in all of life they are called to live/walk with a sensitivity to the Spirit's leading and it just so happens that plumbing provides the context in which they walk in the Spirit in the presence of other people.
This has implications for the way we live. We are to be primarily those who walk in the ways of Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit, and our careers, or whatever we do, provides the context in which we do our walking.
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