Faith & Spirit Quote by James Green Somerville

Somerville frames vocation as a two-step dance where human agency is real but never sovereign. The first sentence grants the modern comfort of choice: entering the ministry is his decision, owned and asserted. Then he quietly yanks the rug out from under that autonomy with the “choice before that one,” relocating the origin point of the story in God’s action. It’s a theological power move disguised as modesty: he sounds like he’s shrinking himself, but he’s also elevating his path from career decision to cosmic appointment.

The phrasing matters. “The choice God made” turns calling into something almost contractual, as if grace has paperwork. “In calling me to be his” tightens the claim: it’s not merely a summons to a role, but a claim of belonging. Ministry, in this reading, is downstream of identity. That reframes doubts, failures, and even reluctance: if the primary decision is God’s, then the minister’s task is less self-invention than response.

Subtextually, it also functions as a defense against two common pressures. Against the secular assumption that clergy are self-selected enthusiasts, Somerville implies he was selected first. Against the religious temptation to treat ministry as moral achievement, he insists he didn’t climb into holiness; he was addressed, then answered. Contextually, this sits comfortably in Protestant-and especially Reformed-inflected-talk about election and calling, where the most important “yes” isn’t the one you utter at the altar, but the one you believe was spoken over you long before you had language for it.