Walk, Forest, Walk.

Rejection made me doubt my calling—but here's what I've learned.

by SDG Morgan

Let’s time travel thousands of years back to ancient Egypt. For forty years, as a prince, Moses had the finest education possible. Then God called him, but Moses misunderstood the call. He thought he had to do it all himself. He failed.

So Moses fled as far as he possibly could and resigned himself to being a dirty, smelly shepherd, inured to isolation and hard labor.

Then forty years after that, God called him again with a burning bush. And without him realizing it, Moses was now perfectly trained for the role that God had in mind.

Yes, he was going to be a leader, but he was going to use those shepherding skills to do it. Yes, he needed all those skills with languages and literacy to be able to capture the first five books of the Bible, but he also needed the patience of a shepherd to herd a new nation of people all while they fought, bit, snapped and sulked at him.

God knew the requirements for his calling; Moses did not.

That has been true in my life also. I started following Jesus when I was six years old, and back then I had absolutely no idea what God had in store for me.

But over 37 years, Jesus has taught me the truth of Isaiah 30:21 “Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, “This is the way; walk in it.”

Step by step, little by little, step by step.

The Bible is very clear about right and wrong decisions, but it won’t tell you about right or left decisions. Instead, as you walk step by step—little by little—step by step—you must learn how to listen. No one learns a language in a day, and part of the process can only be gained from trial and error.

Yes, you’ll feel like a failure, just like Moses did.

Yes, the process will take many years, just like Moses’ did.

But you can start right now even as you’re sitting here reading. Put your screen away, and simply ask Jesus what He has in store for you. He always answers.

(Though you cannot fit Him into your timeline, nor demand an answer in 24 hours or less, and you may have to learn how He speaks before you can understand the answer.)

The Bandersnatch mission statement is to pursue the good, true, and beautiful. This is partly taken from what Paul says in Philippians 4:8 that life should be spent pursuing truth, goodness, excellence, holiness and also semna—a word which translators struggle with.

Some translations have used venerable, some use honorable, and some use honest or dignified. But the Greek for semna can also equally be translatable as awe-inspiring things.

And that is my preferred translation, because it is especially those awe-inspiring things that fire up my soul. I love any art that reveals the world to be big, beautiful and filled with awe.

That’s why I went back to school to study how to become an author. I learned the tricks of the trade, and in five years I finished a novel. Then, for the next fifteen years, I learned exactly how Moses felt in the desert. I wrote five more books, sent them to hundreds of agents and publishers, wrote dozens and dozens of short stories, and got all rejections.

I told all my friends I’d throw a party at my house after my first 100 rejections, and we’d call it the “pity party.” That helped keep me motivated, but that kind of motivation can only last so long. The awe dimmed, and discouragement took deep root. I asked myself, how can a call fail so miserably? Had I misheard? Had I missed my window?

The problem was, I didn’t know what a call was.

---

The Greek word for church, ekklesia is a combined word that means ek- (out) and klesia (called).* It basically means that everyone in the church isn’t there by accident. We’ve all been called to be here. An assumption intrinsic in the word itself is that Jesus has a call for all of us, and as such, he is faithful to train you for our good work, step by step, little by little, step by step, even though sometimes it feels like you’re walking in circles like Moses shepherding his sheep in the wilderness.

I mixed up “the call” with results. I understood “call” as a synonym for career, but in the New Testament, “call” describes who Jesus says already you are. Your “call” is first a being, and only secondarily a doing.

Or, in the words of the great British pastor Martyn Lloyd-Jones:

“A Christian IS something before he DOES anything.”

---

I can imagine Moses spending many bitter nights alone with his sheep, replaying his failure at sparking a human revolution to save his people.

I imagine Moses felt the failure of his call quite keenly.

But slowly, God taught him the same thing Paul taught the church at Ephesus over 1500 years later: The only work worth doing comes out of what God’s already done. We are God’s artwork first, his poem (poiema is the literal Greek word used in Ephesians 2:10 and often translated as “workmanship”).

First, be His art, then create your own. That’s the call.

Jordan Raynor phrases it this way, in Redeeming Your Time:

In Genesis, God created a lot in six days, but what’s equally remarkable is what He did not create. The first few days of creation was God setting up a canvas. The sixth day was when He passed the baton of creation to us–His image bearers–and called us to fill that canvas [literally, to “fill the earth” (1:28)]

God’s art will naturally overflow into art of our own. As Tolkien said it, we’re His “sub-creators.” As Raynor writes: “work is worship.”

For most of us, we feel that call to “fill that canvas” in our bones. But that feeling can become a sickness in our bones if–as I did for many years–we accidentally switch the order and call our sub-creation our calling. If a call is what I do, then who am I if I get 200+ rejections over 15 years?

---

Those who have hiked up huge mountains in Colorado tell me that is a long, long walk. They say that at the beginning you see only trees. Trees forever with switchback trails that appear to go nowhere as they loop endlessly back and forth, back and forth. And what is worse is that you just can’t see over the tall pine trees.

So for hours and hours and hours, all you do is walk back and forth, back and forth, with the same geography and a little voice on your shoulder insisting you’re going nowhere and should just quit. But your guide up the mountain insists you’re on the right path (any experienced mountain hiker knows these switchback trails are the absolute best way to take a hiker slowly and safely up a very steep incline).

But hours and hours later, there’s that magical moment when you reach above the tree line, and you can see how far up the mountain you really have climbed, all by going back and forth back and forth, back and forth, little by little, bit by bit.

That’s how God trained Moses, that’s how God is training me, and that is most likely the same way God will train you. So don’t worry when life seems boring or repetitive or frustrating. (As a stay-at-home Dad, my day-to-day life these days is especially grueling, punctuated by little bursts of beauty and joy.)

When your life has no vision, no progress, only repetitive loops of switchback trails among the same looking trees (“same trees, different day”), never forget that your guide is guiding you the fastest route, step by step, on a path that is slowly and safely raising you up to a great height.

God never wastes a gift, and he never gives a call in vain. Only we can waste a gift by listening to that voice that says to sit down in the middle of the trail and quit.

No, just keep walking. The view later will demonstrate how far you’ve really come.

* P.S. If you liked all the Greek word meanings, you can find more on my Bammerhab podcast or substack!

October 10: Bandersnatch authors and illustrators at Landmark Booksellers in Franklin, Tennessee (11:00 am to noon). Learn more!
November: Above, Not Up release (preorders open in September)

bandersnatchbooks

A post shared by @bandersnatchbooks

Are you near Franklin, Tennessee or will you be gathering there for the Rabbit Room’s Hutchmoot conference? Join Bandersnatch Authors and Illustrators at 11:00 am at Landmark Booksellers.

Follow Bandersnatch Books on Instagram or Facebook!

“A thing does not vanish—it is not even discredited—because someone has spoken of it with exaggeration. It remains exactly where it was.”

C.S. Lewis