Ashes to Artisan: Creative Chronicles VII — The Peace That Walks With Me

By Dylan Verdun Sullivan
As I wrap up the middle of a busy week, I found myself reflecting on a moment that stayed with me long after it passed.
Today I had a medical appointment at Gold Coast University Hospital as part of the process for stepping into my new job. It was one of those ordinary moments that most people would simply move through and forget by the time they reached the car park.
Hospitals have a unique atmosphere. There is a seriousness that hangs quietly in the air. People move through those corridors carrying many different stories. Some arrive hopeful. Some are anxious. Some are facing difficult news.
As I walked through the hospital and eventually made my way outside, I found myself thinking deeply about something that has been quietly growing inside me.
The call of God on my life.
It is a strange thing to carry that thought.
Not strange in a mystical or dramatic way. In fact, the opposite is often true. The call of God rarely arrives with thunder and lightning. More often it appears in ordinary moments—while walking, while thinking, while simply moving through the routine parts of life.
And today, as I stepped out of the hospital and began walking toward the afternoon sunlight, that thought settled deeply in my heart.
God is leading me somewhere.
Not in a loud way.
Not in a way that answers every question about the future.
But in a quiet, steady way.
For many years I imagined that the call of God would feel obvious and dramatic. I thought it would arrive with unmistakable clarity, removing every doubt about the direction ahead.
But the older I get, the more I realize that God often leads people through ordinary steps.
Appointments.
Work.
Responsibilities.
Small decisions made faithfully over time.
The path rarely appears all at once.
Instead, it unfolds slowly—one step at a time.
And as I walked away from the hospital today, that realization settled deeply inside me.
I am stepping into a new season.
Not just in work or daily responsibility, but in something deeper.
A season of learning what it means to follow where God leads.
The call of God does not belong only to pastors standing behind pulpits or missionaries preaching in distant nations. Every believer eventually wrestles with the same question.
Where is God leading me?
What is He shaping inside me?
How is He using the ordinary circumstances of life to prepare me for something I cannot yet see?
Those questions stayed with me as I walked across the hospital grounds.
But something else walked with me as well.
Peace.
Not the kind of peace that comes from having everything figured out.
Not the kind of peace that arrives when life becomes easy.
It was quieter than that.
The kind of peace that simply follows you.
I could feel it as clearly as if someone had placed a steady hand on my shoulder.
The peace of God.
Scripture describes it as the peace that surpasses understanding, and that description makes sense to me now. Because it does not always appear when circumstances are comfortable.
Sometimes it appears right in the middle of uncertainty.
It does not remove the questions about the future.
It simply reminds you that you are not walking alone.
As I continued walking away from the hospital today, that peace stayed with me.
And I realized something important.
When a person begins stepping into the call of God on their life, the path rarely looks impressive from the outside.
There are no dramatic announcements.
No grand moments where everything suddenly becomes clear.
Instead there are quiet confirmations.
A door opens.
A conversation happens.
An opportunity appears.
And somewhere inside your heart, the Spirit whispers gently:
Keep walking.
That is what today felt like.
A quiet confirmation that God is guiding my steps even when the road ahead is not fully visible.
Looking back over my life, I can see how often God has worked this way.
Through suffering.
Through waiting.
Through unexpected turns that I never could have planned for myself.
The fires of those seasons shaped me in ways I did not understand at the time.
Now I can see that those fires were not wasted.
They were preparation.
Preparation for the person I am becoming.
Preparation for the calling that continues to unfold.
Preparation for the work God has placed before me.
None of us step into our calling all at once.
We grow into it.
Slowly.
Patiently.
Sometimes through pain.
Sometimes through quiet moments of clarity.
But always through the faithful work of God shaping us along the way.
Today reminded me of that.
And as I walked away from the hospital, with the afternoon sun stretching across the Gold Coast and the ordinary rhythm of life continuing around me, one thought stayed with me.
The call of God rarely shouts.
More often, it walks quietly beside you.
And if you pay close enough attention, you will realize something else is walking beside you too.
The peace of God.

About the Author

Dylan Verdun Sullivan is the founder of Refined by Fire Press and an Australian author indexed in the National Library. As a Level 7 Local Guide with over 1.2M views on Google Maps, he documents the intersection of faith, recovery, and the "light in the mundane."

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