Bookstagram, Blogging, and Every Good Endeavor

“Our daily work can be a calling only if it is reconceived as God’s assignment to serve others.”

Timothy Keller, Every Good Endeavor

In June of 2023, I was as confused as confused could be. I decided six months prior that I no longer wanted to study Special Education. I was on a break from school and unsure if I would ever go back. I had absolutely no idea what God wanted me to do with my life, so I did what every confused twenty-something year old Christian does when they need to discern God’s will for their life.

I went on a missions trip.

Okay, so this missions trip had actually already been on the books since October of 2022. It’s not like I up and randomly decided one day, “My life is falling apart! Let’s go to the jungle!” I did text my friend who’s a teacher in Ecuador and asked her to be praying that God would use this trip to make some things abundantly clear to me though.

I went on this missions trip and spent a week subbing in a literature class. I got to have discussions with students about C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce (one of my favorite books of all time) and The Chronicles of Narnia (my favorite book series of all time). I thought for sure that this was what God was calling me to do.

Spoiler alert – it wasn’t

I came back from that trip even more confused than when I left. The entire time I was down there, I really kept feeling God telling me that teaching in Ecuador was not my calling. I spent the day I got back crying, taking a fat nap, and then eating my weight in tortilla chips at my local Mexican restaurant.

“Do you trust God,” my dad asked me as I cried into my plate of chicken, rice, and cheese sauce.

I told him that of course I did! I was just really confused.

I don’t remember the exact chain of events that led to it, but I went home after my dad and I finished lunch and started looking at degree programs through Liberty University’s online programs. Even if I didn’t know what God’s calling for me was in the longterm, I knew I wanted to finish school. A degree in English & Writing absolutely fit the bill. I had always loved books (obvi), and I grew up wanting to be a writer. Even better, I realized I could finish my degree in two and a half semesters!

When I tell you working on that English degree was one of the greatest experiences of my life, I’m not kidding. I got to read so many books I wouldn’t have picked up on my own. Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka. The Inferno by Dante Alligheri. Excerpts of Revelations of Divine Love by Julian of Norwich. I took a whole class on Shakespeare. I wrote a capstone project on The Portrait of a Lady. I learned more about Christian aesthetics in art.

Which brings me to today.

I don’t work in full-time ministry like I expected I would. In fact, I recently pulled myself from all of my volunteer positions at church (It’s a long story). I work in a “secular” environment.

And if I’m honest, I’m still a little confused sometimes, and I still feel a little lost sometimes.

I’m currently reading a book by Timothy Keller titled Every Good Endeavor. I picked it up in hopes that it would help give me a little bit of insight into what I should be doing with my life, and it has. Just not in the way I imagined.

It’s showed me that for the Christian, there is no sacred job or secular job. Because we’re Christians living in the Gospel and calling of Christ, all work is sacred work.

It’s showed me that work, when not viewed through the lens of the Gospel and in service of others, will feel rather soul sucking.

And it’s showed met that I can be using my bookstagram and my English degree for more than just posting reviews of books I like.

So here I am blogging about my love of literature and its intersection with theology and Christian life. I don’t know what the future holds. I may still end up on the mission field some day. I may finish my Master’s and start teaching on the collegiate level. Or maybe I’ll just keep blogging and talking about my passion for literature and how Christian’s engage with culture.

The point is, I don’t know what tomorrow holds. I know who holds tomorrow though, and I trust Him with my bookstagram, my blog, and every good endeavor.