Calling, Callings, and Russian Nesting Dolls

In her book Make Work Matter, Michaela O’Donnell uses the image of Russian nesting dolls to help us understand the interrelationship between God’s calling and our callings.

If you picture a set of these Russian dolls, you know they are unified yet separate and distinct. Each doll resembles the others and the smaller dolls are hidden inside the larger dolls. When you play with these dolls, you start with the largest, outer doll. Opening it, you find a slightly smaller doll. If you open it, you find an even smaller doll. And so it goes until the last tiny, innermost doll.

The image of these dolls is rather like our calling/callings. Michaela explains,

I think calling is a lot like a set of nesting dolls. We have an innermost calling from God—the most sacred and core calling to belong to Jesus. From there, more nesting dolls are added, each representing another layer of God’s calling to us. I want to suggest four layers of God’s calling: the call to belong to Christ, the call to work toward redemption, the call to create, and the call to particulars. (Make Work Matter, p. 79)

All Christians have nesting-doll callings, no matter our age or condition. Our challenge is to discover how we respond to these interrelated callings in the varying seasons and contexts of our lives. As we get older, we may respond in new and different ways though the basic call of God remains consistent.