Our Life’s Call
Friday, November 13, 2026
Father Richard encourages us toward a vocational call:
Vocation is one way in which we discover and grow into our true self. I’m not speaking so much about education, career, or livelihood, though in some cases they might overlap. In general, there is a Larger Life that somehow calls us forward (vocatio means “a call or summons” in Latin), more than we call it to us. If we engineer the process too much, we often mistake a security-based occupation for our soul’s vocation. [1]
Parker Palmer, a Quaker teacher and activist whom I deeply trust, reflects on his own “further journey”:
[There are] moments when it is clear—if I have the eyes to see—that the life I am living is not the same as the life that wants to live in me. In those moments I sometimes catch a glimpse of my true life, a life hidden like the river beneath the ice. And … I wonder: What am I meant to do? Who am I meant to be?
I was in my early thirties when I began, literally, to wake up to questions about my vocation. By all appearances, things were going well, but the soul does not put much stock in appearances. Seeking a path more purposeful than accumulating wealth, holding power, winning at competition, or securing a career, I had started to understand that it is indeed possible to live a life other than one’s own….
Then I ran across the old Quaker saying, “Let your life speak.” I found those words encouraging, and I thought I understood what they meant: “Let the highest truths and values guide you. Live up to those demanding standards in everything you do.”…
So I lined up the loftiest ideals I could find and set out to achieve them. The results were rarely admirable, often laughable, and sometimes grotesque. But always they were unreal, a distortion of my true self—as must be the case when one lives from the outside in, not the inside out. I had simply found a “noble” way to live a life that was not my own, a life spent imitating heroes instead of listening to my heart.
Today, some thirty years later, “Let your life speak” means something else to me … : “Before you tell your life what you intend to do with it, listen for what it intends to do with you. Before you tell your life what truths and values you have decided to live up to, let your life tell you what truths you embody, what values you represent.” [2]
In other words, your life is not about you. You are about a larger thing called Life. You are not your own. You are an instance of a universal and eternal pattern. Life is living itself in you. The myriad forms of life in the universe are merely parts of the One Life—that many of us call “God.” We don’t have to figure it all out, fix everything, or do life perfectly by ourselves. It is an enormous weight off our backs. All we have to do is participate in this One Life. To find our unique niche in that Always Larger Life is what we mean by “vocation.” [3]
References:
[1] Richard Rohr, “Let Your Life Speak,” Daily Meditations, May 27, 2018.
[2] Parker J. Palmer, Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation (Jossey-Bass, 2000), 2-3.
[3] Adapted from Richard Rohr, Adam’s Return: The Five Promises of Male Initiation (Crossroad Publishing, 2004), 60, 61.
Image credit and inspiration: Izzy Spitz, “hands at work,” 2026, mixed media, felt pen on paper, Placitas, New Mexico. Click here to enlarge image. We each respond to divine invitations in our own way, putting our hands in the soil and planting seeds of care without knowing what will grow, but trusting that each one carries life.
Bumps on the Romans Road to Salvation
How an Evangelistic Tool Botched the Gospel
| BRADLEY JERSAKNOV 12 |
Question: “Salvation” and “the Romans Road”
A question I keep coming back to is what it actually means to “be saved.” I grew up with “the Romans Road” and the sinner’s prayer, and I’m trying to understand how to read passages like Romans 10:9–10 in light of our union with Christ.
Response:
1. What was “the Romans Road”?
The Romans Road to Salvation was an Evangelistic method of presenting an Evangelical gospel using a series of verses extracted from Paul’s letter to the Romans.
The Romans Road laid out a path to salvation that began by emphasizing sin and its consequences, then offering salvation through faith in the redeeming power of Jesus’ death and resurrection. Let’s review it, then point out some issues. Here was the basic outline:
- The Human Problem – Sin
Romans 3:23 – “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;” - The Consequence of Sin
Romans 6:23 – “For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” - The Solution – Christ’s Sacrifice
Romans 5:8 – “But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” - The Response – Faith
Romans 10:9 – “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.” - The Assurance of Salvation
Romans 10:13 – “For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.”
2. Difficulties with “the Romans Road”
The problem with the Romans Road was that it began with the first half of Paul’s logic (or that of his opponents) with God’s “No” to humankind, but didn’t continue reading Paul’s response in context. This approach obscured God’s “Yes” by shifting the gospel message from the salvation/deliverance of God through the faithfulness of Christ to a salvation conditioned on the adequacy of our response to a conditional offer. This message seemed unaware or dismissive of our union with Christ already established through the Incarnation. The selection of verses seemed miss Paul’s premise and punchline!
For example, we would hear:
Romans 3:23
“…for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,”
without Romans 3:24
“… and all are justified [or delivered] freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”
Such an omission seems heretical to me, because it universalizes the sin problem while evading the universal restoration punchline.
So too with Romans 6:23
They would at least cite the whole verse…
“For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
But we would make the ‘gift’ part conditional. You have to receive the gift to be ‘saved.’
Paul didn’t say that. The gift is already given and applied to humanity, to the renewal of human nature in Christ.
And yes, there is the aspect of confessing joyfully and believing in our heart that is our participation in the gift, as per Romans 10:9…
“If you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”
That’s true… we experience God’s salvation as we participate in the gift already given. Something new does happen through trusting what Christ has done and the living connection we enjoy. So a response certainly matters to our quality of life—the abundant life of peace that comes from knowing God.
Now, who will respond? Who will experience this mercy?
After wondering about his Jewish brethren who have not confessed Christ, Paul gets to his punchline in Romans 11
Romans 11
25 I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers and sisters, so that you may not be conceited: Israel has experienced a hardening in part until the full number of the Gentiles has come in, 26 and in this way all Israel will be saved. As it is written:
“The deliverer will come from Zion;
he will turn godlessness away from Jacob.
27 And this is my covenant with them
when I take away their sins.”28 As far as the gospel is concerned, they are enemies for your sake; but as far as election is concerned, they are loved on account of the patriarchs, 29 for God’s gifts, and his call are irrevocable. 30 Just as you who were at one time disobedient to God have now received mercy as a result of their disobedience, 31 so they too have now become disobedient in order that they too may now receive mercy as a result of God’s mercy to you. 32 For God has bound everyone over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all.
And again, yes, a confession of faith does something, and here is what Paul foresees in Philippians 2:
10 … at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
So if we take all of Paul’s testimony together, what does he mean by “saved”?
- we have been saved – at the Cross – it is accomplished
- we are being saved – the experience of deliverance in this life, in an ongoing journey with significant waypoints, such as our awakening to the revelation of the gospel, but also before and after that
- we will be saved – through death into resurrection life when death is no more
All of this is by grace and by the means of grace, including the Incarnation, the Passion and Resurrection of Christ, our union with God in Christ, our own faith experience, and even the final judgment.
Scripture tells us that the telos of it all is the universal reconciliation and restoration of all things and all people (Colossians 1). All these means encompass what it means for all to be saved.
