The Vocation

Part 3 of the story...(final part for now!)

The other day, I was writing a piece for a friend about Rembrandt's painting, The Return of the Prodigal Son.  As part of my study, I came across a great little book by Henri Nouwen about the painting.  His experience of Rembrandt's work of art so strikingly mirrored my encounter with The Kiss, I found myself weeping over it as I read it.  

I guess I had known that God "gave" me the picture of The Kiss at a time of hardship and had used it to sustain me for a long, six year period of darkness in my life.  And for that I am so, so grateful!  What I didn't know was The Kiss would move from being a bolster to hold me up in dark times, to the voice of a new calling in my life.

"I have a new vocation now", is how Nouwen describes the transforming effect of his picture.  That is how I feel about The Kiss.

I have a new vocation now.  To speak and write and live from the vantage point of The Kiss:

As one who is loved

As one who is enveloped

As one who can let go of her rehearsed speeches

As one who knows that the Father "is not listening", so I don't have to either

As one who holds on and is held

As one on my knees before my Love

As one held close

As one who gives in to the embrace

As one who is kissed

To live from The Kiss is to speak into realms void of affection; to convey freedom to places of bondage.  It is to move energized by the Father's great abundance into houses of scarcity and hoarding.  It is to remember that everyone I see is invited into the kiss, and to remind them of that fact.

I have a new vocation now.  

And in case that wasn't totally clear already, as I was praying over all of this, here was my "fortune" from a dinner the other night.

Funny how God keeps using some sort of canvas and color to get my attention!!