It’s amazing how simply hearing one throwaway line can completely rewire your imagination.

I was walking along the beach this morning with Tahnee listening to a podcast on the subject of Vocation where author Karen Swallow was being interviewed about her new book ‘You Have a Calling‘. I am speaking this week on the subject of Vocation and I had some teaching ready to go – a fair bit of old stuff with a few new ideas from more recent reading and experience. It’s a subject I am familiar with and I enjoy teaching around it, but something was bothering me and I couldn’t seem to find the itch to scratch it. Something just didn’t feel quite right in the content.

The conversation on the podcast was around the calling of Paul and the high visibility and clarity of his calling – yet at the same time acknowledging that a literal calling of that type from God is rare and exceptional. Swallow went on to say:

“And so, but there’s so much joy and satisfaction that can be had in the ordinary and mundane. And we miss it if we’re looking for something else that’s not there or not ours to follow.”

From A Theology of Hustle: You Have a Calling: Karen Swallow Prior on Work, Vocation, and Beauty, 26 Aug 2025

She went on to use the analogy of the Lord of The Rings

“But I always like to think about the hobbits in Lord of the Rings. And like, man, the hobbits are an example of this to me. Like, they’re just like very simple people, and they carry on, they party, they hang out, they like live like pretty mundane lives, especially compared to the other characters, these elves and these wizards. And it’s God’s mission that’s carried out through the mundane in so many ways. Like, it’s only the people who are mundane that are able to walk out that calling in so many ways. And I just, I love how he brought that out in that work, so. Yeah. Where most of us are called to be hobbits.”

Most of us are called to be hobbits…

I love that line. It makes so much sense. As I reflected on what I had prepared I realised much of what I was drawing on from scripture was call narratives of people like Abraham, Moses or Paul. And while they are graphic and inspirational, most of us aren’t those kinds of people.

Most of us aren’t Aragorn or Boromir either. We are Frodo, Sam and Pippin living simple ordinary lives in 21st C suburbia, so when we sing that song in church about being ‘history makers’ it feels like there is a bit of pressure to step into a vocation that is not ours to own. My guess is that few of us will be Nelson Mandelas, William Booths or Wilberforces. But we can be ourselves if we can be content with that.

We can be the people God has made us to be in the place we find ourselves today.

As I pondered where to head with this new insight I felt drawn to re-explore the book of Ruth – a story of some difficult life situations, some formative choices and some (relatively) insignificant people living out their calling in a beautiful way.

Ruth’s story could easily be over looked as one about vocation because she doesn’t appear to have a moment of revelation where God speaks to her directly. In fact as far as we know she wasn’t even a worshipper of the Hebrew God.

What we do have however, is a woman responding to her own tragic circumstances with selfless love and care for her older mother in law. Could that have been her calling? Was this a form of ‘aged care’ in her time? It seems she made a very firm choice to set her course on the care and protection of her mother in law even at the expense of her own happiness.

Her choice to follow Naomi back to Judah and to stay with her until the end is a beautiful story, but it isn’t grandiose in any way. It is just a simple depiction of love, kindness and selflessness – even to the extent of marrying Boaz and having a son with him. It’s hard to imagine that Ruth ‘loved’ Boaz in the sense that we imagine romantic love, but being with him and having a son with him was part of her care for Naomi.

And it didn’t go unnoticed.

⁴ The women said to Naomi: “Praise be to the Lord, who this day has not left you without a guardian-redeemer. May he become famous throughout Israel! ¹⁵ He will renew your life and sustain you in your old age. For your daughter-in-law, who loves you and who is better to you than seven sons, has given him birth.

Ha… your daughter in law who is better than seven sons…

Yeah – there are Abrahams, Moses and Pauls in our communities, but more often we have Ruth types who live their lives faithfully and with integrity, and who generally go unnoticed. And if my wife happens to read this to the end – then yes – I see you in this – and you have been a beautiful example of a life lived in quiet, usually unseen service to others – one of whom is your mother in law and to whom you have been ‘better than seven sons’.

There is a quote from Henri Nouwen that I read years ago, but Danelle flicked across to me again recently that feels like it echoes more of this sentiment.

“More and more, the desire grows in me simply to walk around, greet people, enter their homes, sit on their doorsteps, play ball, throw water, and be known as someone who wants to live with them. It is a privilege to have the time to practice this simple ministry of presence. Still, it is not as simple as it seems.

“My own desire to be useful, to do something significant, or to be part of some impressive project is so strong that soon my time is taken up by meetings, conferences, study groups, and workshops that prevent me from walking the streets. It is difficult not to have plans, not to organize people around an urgent cause, and not to feel that you are working directly for social progress.

“But I wonder more and more if the first thing shouldn’t be to know people by name, to eat and drink with them, to listen to their stories and tell your own, and to let them know with words, handshakes, and hugs that you do not simple like them, but truly love them” (Gracias: A Latin American Journal, 1983).

It’s not a bad thing to be a hobbit and to live the simple life, to sit on doorsteps and play ball. It might even take some of the pressure off (unless you happen to be that one hobbit who finds the ring…)

In reflecting on vocation or calling, it has led me to seeing it a little differently; less a moment of God encounter and more a compilation of our life circumstances and backstory, merged with our innate capacities and then driven by the decisions we make in critical times. Yes – there could be a burning bush type thing going on, but maybe most of determining vocation is ‘letting your life speak’ to quote Parker Palmer.