GroshLink

Earlier today I had the opportunity to participate in the commissioning of PSU-Hershey Medical School graduates who were part of the PSU-Hershey Christian Medical Society (CMS)/CMDA. Wow! What a privilege to serve students, faculty, researchers, the medical community at PSU-Hershey (nurses, physicians, therapists, etc), and by doing such indirectly serving patients (at the Medical Center and where alumni are sent, even to the ends of the earth as medical missionaries).

With the graduating students, I shared some of our family's appreciation of physicians who provide care with 'head, heart, and hands' and the below quote on vocation. May you also find it of encouragement.

"The extent to which we see our work as a calling to serve and ultimately to glorify God will be the extent to which our legacy lasts. It may be a legacy absent of great wealth or hordes of descendents. It may even be a legacy that goes entirely unnoticed by succeeding generations. But it will be an established legacy nonetheless, a legacy of good and faithful labor done for the glory of God.

John Calvin once said, 'Each individual has his own sort of living assigned to him as a sort of sentry post.'* It is the place and the work to which God has called us. As Calvin continues, God asks of us but one thing: to be faithful stewards of the callings that he has entrusted to us and to be faithful stewards of our sentry posts. Culturally we are taught to rank these posts and callings -- even to envy the posts and callings of others. We value and devalue people and their work, even ourselves and our own work, on these false scales and against false paradigms. From this false standard we wrongly evaluate our own work and worth, and the work and worth of others. The standard that works is the one that God has established.

'No task,' Calvin tells us, 'will be so sordid and base, provided you obey your calling in it, that it will not shine and be reckoned very precious in God's sight.'** The standard for evaluating our work and our worth is to see our work as a calling in the service of God, for his glory.

Paul says it clearly, 'Whatever you do, do all to the glory of God' (I Cor 10:31). That certainly applies to our work. We should, like Johann Sebastian Bach, be able to attach two sets of initials to everything we do: our own initials and the initials SDG, Soli Deo Gloria. And as we do, we'll find that the words of the psalmist become true. We will find that God's favor is upon us, and that he is, by his grace and for his own glory, establishing the work of our hands."

*John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion. 3.10.6

**Ibid.

-- The conclusion of Stephen J. Nichols' booklet "What is Vocation?" (P&R Publishing, 2010, p.31). You may remember that he's spoken for the Christian Scholar Series and written for InterVarsity Press. For more on my paradigm on vocation read Loving God in the Flesh in the Real World.

I think it's about time I write a more focused piece for health care professionals, drawing from the CMS presentation I gave this spring, my reflections on the Incarnational Stream/Tradition, and various other posts. Something for the fall? I've asked the students to hold me accountable to and encourage me in this task. I ask you to do likewise ;-)