What does God think about what I am doing with my life?

I find myself wondering that more often than not.

Not necessarily because I think I’m doing something wrong. More because I wonder how my life is measuring up to what I believe about the way God works in the world.

When I was a younger Christian, it was pretty deeply ingrained in my spiritual formation that there were things I could do that would either please God or displease Him. There was an expectation that God had a very specific path for my life, and if I could just figure out what that path was and follow it correctly, I would make God happy and, somehow, finally become the person I was supposed to be.

I carried that idea for a long time.

But as I’ve gotten older, had a lot of different jobs, worked in ministry and outside of ministry, lived through changing circumstances, unexpected challenges, successes, failures, and all the other things that come with being alive, I’ve started to see it differently.

I think the path is much broader than I once believed.

The idea that there is one particular path I have to find, or one specific thing God expects me to do with my life, may be more of a self imposed expectation than something God has actually imposed on me.

We can get this idea from the people we read about in Scripture. David. Moses. John the Baptist. These larger than life figures who seem to have been given these extraordinary callings and then went on to do extraordinary things.

But what if the point isn’t to live up to their calling?

What if the point is simply to be faithful with what God has given me, in the time and place I’ve been given, with the gifts and opportunities I have?

Because most of us aren’t parting seas, slaying giants, or calling entire nations to repentance.

Most of us are just trying to get through Tuesday.

We’re trying to put food on the table. Be a good spouse. Be a decent parent. Keep the kids alive and get them to practice on time. Do good work. Not get fired. Show up for our friends. Pay the bills. Figure out what comes next.

And maybe that’s not a lesser calling.

Maybe the quiet, ordinary things we do every day, when they are done in the direction of the Kingdom we’ve been invited into, are exactly the kind of faithfulness God is looking for.

Maybe following Jesus is less about accomplishing something spectacular for God and more about becoming the kind of person who brings the way of Jesus into whatever space we happen to occupy.

There’s a saying we have in our household.

Bring TOV.

If you’ve been around Stories of TOV for any length of time, you probably know that tov is the Hebrew word often translated as “good.”

So, simply put:

Bring good.

That’s what I think my calling is.

Not some perfectly mapped out path that I have to discover and execute.

Not a particular job title.

Not a certain level of success.

Not some grand accomplishment that proves I did what God wanted me to do.

Just this:

Whatever I do, wherever I am, whoever I am with, keep moving in the direction of TOV.

Bring good.

Bring life.

Bring peace.

Bring kindness.

Bring justice.

Bring beauty.

Bring the goodness of God into the ordinary places where I actually live.

And maybe, at the end of my life, when I look back at all of it, the different jobs, the different seasons, the successes and failures, the things I got right and the things I completely screwed up, I won’t be asking whether I found the one perfect path.

Maybe I’ll simply be able to say that, throughout all of it, I did my best to bring TOV.

And if I can say that honestly, I have a hard time believing God is disappointed.

I think He’s smiling.

I’m just saying…