Purpose
Sometimes Christianity is mistaken as just a list of rules. Unnecessary, somewhat meaningless rules.
Why should we have to be modest? To respect one another? To forgive? To love? To suffer? To dedicate everything we do to someone that we can’t see?
I believe it comes down to a matter of purpose.
There has to be a reason that we’re here. What a sad, empty life we would live if we were just placed somewhere for no reason. I’ve spent a lot of time volunteering, and some of the events that I’ve worked for have gotten a few too many volunteers for everyone to always being doing something. So there are some times when you’re just standing there awkwardly without anything to do. You have no purpose.
Thankfully, when God made the world and shaped each and every one of us, He had a very specific plan. Some would believe in Him. Of those, some would be teachers, some would be apostles, some would be pastors, some would be parents… He knows exactly where everyone is supposed to wind up.
The problem here, as I discussed with a friend of mine, is that we don’t know where we’re supposed to end up.
College is hard. There are definitely fun times, but it is hard. I make a bad habit of overloading myself (or “that fun thing where you leave yourself ten seconds to eat and never sleep and do a crazy amount of things,” as my roommate described it) because I want to get a lot of experience. And it’s good things- of course I should get internships in journalism and psychology if those are fields that I think I’d like to spend a lifetime pursuing. I should certainly take enough classes to graduate. There’s no problem with attending extracurricular events, or joining a club.
But sometimes, things get so crazy that I’m just working and not thinking about it. One semester, I was taking a lot of credits, three of which made up a very hard, frustrating, and time-consuming class. Freshmen dread it when they enter the school. Professors don’t hesitate to fail students on certain assignments. Classmates form a quick bond because no one else can quite understand what it takes to make it through that class. It was terrible.
But because I spent so much time working and working and working for that class, and my other credits, I realized that I’d become something of a machine. I would get done (most of) what I needed to, calculate how much sleep I would be able to get, listen to my roommate chide me for forgetting to eat dinner again, fill my planner with to-do lists, go to bed, and then do it all again.
I entirely forgot why I was doing any of it, and that made it that much harder to get through. Why was I willing to put up with this?
For a time, I wasn’t sure. So I started to seek a purpose. A friend and I spent time in a devotional that encouraged us to seek out the purpose of our lives.
To this day, all I can come up with is to glorify God. I think that there must be something more specific, involving my talents and interests, but I also think that the main theme- the thing that runs through and above and around it all, is that I am here on this earth to glorify my God.
Okay, so I have a purpose. But I have to achieve it somehow. It’s tempting to be like the servant in Jesus’ story of the talents (a type of money) who just hid the master’s one talent in the ground. I played it safe, I stuck to the official rules, and hopefully I’ll be okay.
But instead, we’re called to invest it all. The servant with the five talents put those talents to work, and he earned five more. He served his purpose. The servant with the two talents did the same.
And they got to hear, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”
I would love to hear my Master say that to me.
I’ve always thought it was interesting that the word for the type of money described in Jesus’ parable translated to the English word “talent,” which holds a different meaning for us.
And it might actually come in handy. I’m going to try to pinpoint five talents of mine. (You can try with more or less!) Then I’m going to think and pray about how I can invest those gifts (without going crazy and overinvesting in all five- at some point, I wouldn’t be investing anymore. I’d just be doing.) for God’s glory- to serve my ultimate purpose.
One speaker pointed out that if God didn’t exist (well, we’d have a LOT of problems, but more specifically) each person wouldn’t have a pre-defined purpose. We’d all just have to choose our own purposes, and they might not add up to serve any greater purpose. In the end, it would be meaningless.
It’s good to know that we have a reason to be here. To God be the glory.
