“Do you want just a job…or do you want a calling”? This was a question thrown out for discussion at 100 bloggers,by Phil Gerbyshak

It is a question I have pondered lately. In fact a friend and I were talking several weeks ago. I bemoaned the fact that we never see each other. Never talk never get together for lunch or coffee. Had I done something to upset her was my question? Her response was terse and angry.”I don’t have the luxury of working from home like you do” she responded. Here’s a friendship in trouble I thought, I was right, she hasn’t called, emailed, returned my calls. It is Sad to end a friendship, this way. Why? Because she has a Job and I have a passionate calling.

When we were still on the ranch, periodically the concept of “Riding for the brand” would come up, usually from a young cowboy, with old west ideology.
We felt that it was impractical to ask young families to give us their lives, because we knew some day we would be leaving the ranch. However a particular cowboy, who had drifted to the ranch 12 years before, got married, bought cattle and made a life for his family there. He and his became part of the ranch family.
I heard a man talking the other day about finding ranch help, how it is nearly impossible to get and keep help. That is exactly the thing, until they become part of the ranch family; the “brand” has no meaning to them.

That is what I consider a calling, I have a number of siblings in the ministry, that is a calling, and my passion with my art is a calling. That is how I define what I do. A passion, a calling, it is as C.H. SPURGEON says a rightness in our souls,”Opportunities for God’s service should be sought in our common avocations; we may glorify God very much therein. ”