Vocation - how can God use you?
This year the ALOVE summer school tour will be presenting two seminars during the day. The vocation seminar will be helping you to delve deeper into what vocation means and how it impacts you as a teenager, as a Christian and as part of The Salvation Army.
When I think back to making decisions in my life about education, career, church and relationships, I sometimes wonder whether those decisions have really been based on a call from God or on what I fancied doing or being at that point in my life.
Well, I guess when I look back I do have a vocation and did follow that prompting that was deep within me. I work as an Occupational Therapist for the NHS. This means that I help people who have been poorly or may have a disability to reach their full potential in carrying out everyday life tasks like cleaning your teeth or getting dressed. I do this in rehabilitation, assessing people for special equipment and training carers how to look after people really well. I've worked with old people who sadly have dementia, middle aged people diagnosed with cancer and now disabled children born with Downs Syndrome and Cerebral Palsy. The job is not glamorous and I'll never earn a million pounds from it, but I know deep down that I am called to be in the place I work and with the people that I work with.
How can I be sure of this? Well, my aunty is a retired nurse and used to work with children who have severe physical and learning disabilities. She told me about Occupational Therapy when I was sixteen years old and suggested that I look into it as a career for me. So I was intrigued and went off to research it a bit and talk to the careers advisor at school. In doing this, I suddenly felt such a strong sense that this was right for me and it has been the only job I have ever wanted to do since then. I based my A level choices on the job and trained specifically at university for it. However, it has taken me over six years of being qualified as an Occupational Therapist to get to work with children where I really felt called all this time.
Work is work and can be hard and there are still days when I'd rather stay in bed than get up and there are days when the job literally gives me a headache, but I know that God uses me to bring comfort and hope in situations which are often desperate. God calls us first and foremost to love him and secondly to serve him by serving his people. The call will be there for you so what are you waiting for......find out how God can use you at Spire 2010 - Coming to a summer school near you!
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