Book Summary: The concept for this book began as a series of Bible studies prepared for the 2003 Gathering of Presbyterian Women. 1 The theme of the conference, "God's Vision, Our Calling, " grew out of the planning committee's prayerful consideration of Ephesians 4:1-6, the Scripture passage for the event: I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all. Working with this scripture as a base, I began to look at other biblical passages that address the dual theme of God's grand design and our Christian calling. As one might expect, I found numerous connections to the Ephesians text and its themes in both Old and New Testament writings. Moreover, six sub-themes related to the larger theme of our calling kept repeatedly coming to the fore. Together with the theme of God's vision, these have formed the outline for this book. From start to finish, the Bible indicates that there is an intimate connection between God's long-term vision and our immediate calling. The core of this can be seen in the Bible's own construction, in which the vast majority of Scripture describes the human struggle of real life as it falls between the goodness of the original creation (Genesis) and the future glory of the realm of God (Revelation). Time and again, the message of the biblical writerscomes down to this: God has a vision of wholeness for us and for the world that the first creation modeled and that the new creation will bring to permanent fruition; in the meantime, God calls us to create as much of that wholeness as we can on earth right now. The Ephesians passage taps into this over-arching divine vision by centering on wholeness within the community of faith. Only when we live in unity in the Spirit, the passage suggests, are we able to fulfill our calling and usher in a bit of God's realm into the here-and-now. This book looks at six aspects of our calling as Christians and how this calling relates to God's own vision. We will begin in the first chapter with a look at what the Bible tells us about God's grand plan. Chapters two and three will then
