I am not entirely sure how to say this. I’m positive it’s going to result in a mass of anger from people born or raised in the 80s. But I’m going to just put it out there and hope I’m not met with a huge revolt of rage. So here it goes: I hate the beloved video game characters known as the Mario Brothers. And I want to be clear that I’m not talking about a mild dislike or indifference. I really do mean hate, as in loathe.

The basic foundation for my dislike is that I’m simply not good at it. As a child, I thought it was a lack of hand-eye coordination. But as I attempted to play it as an adult, I realized that I really was quite awful. I always jump too late and fall down some kind of vertical tunnel. Or I jump too early and I am eaten by some sort of carnivorous plant. And I never jump at the right time to collect gold coins, so I have to turn around about ten times just to score one coin. So I continue through this torturous game with my little Mario figure running at amazingly fast speed, failing to gain the prizes as I should, toward some unknown, unclear goal. And I do all of this, paying no attention to what is currently going on in the game, all in hopes of reaching that desired winning state. Of course, I personally can never reach that level so my little Mario Brother just continues to run and, of course, fall down vertical tunnels.

Sadly at times I feel my life may resemble a Mario game just a little too much. While I thankfully do not have the mustache Mario so perfectly rocks, I do race through what is going on in my life, seeking and searching for my “calling” just as Mario speeds through his game. Even now, I can’t exactly label what my calling is. I don’t really feel that I fall into the preaching/evangelizing, music ministry or multi-media ministry categories which often receive the most attention. So I find myself on this race of trying to figure out what my calling is. I try to define myself, define what I like, or define what I’m good at. I plan and set goals of where I want to be in 2 months, in 6 months, and in August of 2010. I have color coded printouts in manila folders detailing my immediate, short term, and long term goals. And in each of these, I stare at the lists trying to find out when or where my “calling” is going to emerge. I ask myself at which stage in life is it going to be clear as to what my calling is. Is it when I start a doctoral program? Is it when I start my dream career? Is it when I get married? Is it when I start a family?
So just like Mario, I race through these questions in my day-to-day life toward a calling. And yet, just like Mario, I never stop or pause to see if it is in “the now.” Could my calling really be right now? Could I be living a calling? Could, in each moment of each day, we all have some kind of calling?

These questions came to me as I was grading one of my student’s papers who briefly mentioned the concept of “Oneness Pentecostals.” Having taught college English for two and half years, I acknowledge that it is extremely rare to find this in a student’s research paper. But here is the unique situation: this semester I am an adjunct Comp teacher at Oral Roberts University. ORU can be unofficially defined as the Mecca for charismatic, Trinitarian young people and here I, a oneness apostolic, stand as their instructor. While it may seem obvious to you that I absolutely had a calling at this time, it didn’t to me. I didn’t recognize this as a calling because quite frankly I didn’t really want this. I wanted to be in a doctoral program and not a part-time, low-paid teacher. I wanted to be continuing research and presenting my thesis at conferences and not worrying if these ORU students were noticing how I interchange the terms Jesus and God. I wanted to see my long-term glorious calling as a oneness apostolic ultimately arguing in front of juries in packed courthouses and instead I was a oneness apostolic trying to teach eighteen-year-olds how to correct comma splices. I couldn’t see a calling in the now because I didn’t really want my life in the now. I wanted the calling I saw in my future and I failed to stop that search to recognize the calling that lay directly in front of me.

Perhaps, we don’t recognize these immediate callings because they don’t get as much face time or publicity as the more common callings. When speakers proclaim at youth conferences that there are future preachers, preacher’s wives, and missionaries among the young people, they fail to remind us that there are also future Comp teachers who will teach at popular Trinitarian universities. Just as I’m sure they also fail to mention there are future business men or women, or perhaps future business majors among us. While you may have a tendency to want to see your calling when you become CEO of a major corporation, right now you are a business major at a local university and there is a calling in this state in your life. While it would take far too much space to acknowledge every field or every profession, I would say seek and find your calling for “your now.” Your calling may change in time and it may not, but one does exist for right now and it is just as important as that one you seek for your future.

As I prepare for another semester of teaching English, I must consider this one question. What happens when Mario falls down the vertical tunnel? Although we know the game is over as well as his quest for his long term glory, we never really see where he ends up. I like to think he lands somewhere where he is surrounded by thousands of twenty-something, college students who are required to give him their full attention for at least three hours a week and thus begins a new mission, an immediate mission, for him to change his world.´

Melissa Moore

A twenty-something in the United Pentecostal Church
Wagoner, Oklahoma | 85 Members
Pastor Micah Wisdom