What a Hundred Lifeguards Taught Me About My Calling

Emily Freeman took her children to an indoor water park. You know the kind where there are shouts and screams and the humidity is so thick the water condenses and drips from he ceiling. As a parent, she’s miserable, but still is there for the sake of her family who are having the time of their lives.

But she comes away impressed by the lifeguards and their dedication to keeping the thrashing hordes of children safe. Armed with a whistle in their mouth and an orange float, they were serious in their duties. Obviously well-trained and disciplined, they patrolled heir assigned portion of the pool with vigilance.

“They were each assigned an eight foot length of the pool. No more and no less,” Emily writes at Chatting at the Sky. “They were responsible for those eight feet and anyone who swam within them. They paced their assigned distance back and forth on the edge of the pool, eyes never leaving the water.”

The job of each of these young lifeguards was to protect their one section. If they each did their job, then the entire pool was safe.

Emily learned something about her own calling by her trip to the pool.

“Could it be possible we have it wrong? That the gift isn’t in believing we can do anything but in knowing we can do nothing? Could it be possible that your limits – those things you curse and hate and wish were different about yourself – are not holding you back but pointing you forward?”

Paul wrote similarly about the body of Christ – don’t try to do it all. Just be what you are supposed to be. “The boy is not one member, but many.”

“He doesn’t equip me to do every job possible,” Emily writes. “He equips me to do the job meant for me.”

Read, “What 100 lifeguards taught me about calling.”

Post by Newsletter Editor David Rupert.