My prayer lately has been to hold everything I have in this world in an open hand - to not grasp or cling to any material good, or even to those that I love. I want to cling only to Christ - to the promises that He has given me and the work He has for me to do. That, in essence, is our avocation in life. All other things are our vocation - work, but not what God gives us to cling to.Dorothy Sayers wrote about something similar in Gaudy Night. Harriet and a friend at Oxford are discussing how one acts when you know what your "job" (or avocation) is, and how differently you act when you don't:
If you truly want a thing, you don’t snatch; if you snatch, you don’t really want it. Do you suppose that, if you find yourself taking pains about a thing, it’s a proof of its importance to you?”“I think it is, to a large extent. But the big proof is that the thing comes right, without those fundamental errors. One always makes surface errors, of course. But a fundamental error is a sure sign of not caring. I wish one could teach people nowadays that the doctrine of snatching what one thinks one wants is unsound.”
“I saw six plays in London this winter,” said Harriet, “all preaching the doctrine of snatch. I agree that they left me with the feeling that none of the characters knew what they wanted.”“No,” said Miss DeVine. “If you are once sure what you do want, you find that everything else goes down before it like grass under a roller–-all other interests, your own and other people’s.”
When I clutch, life tastes life berries and water; when I let go, I get honeycakes and wine.
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