Knowing Our Purpose and Living Accordingly

Concluding my expansion of thoughts from “I Want to Live from the Center of Things,” I am today writing about living in line with our purpose and personhood.

I want to live from the center of things.

I want to know what I am and what I am not about, and live accordingly.

How often does something come into our days that completely derails us from a task at hand?

Not too long ago, I was hard at work on a sermon while sitting at a desk at the public library. I got up from the desk to use the restroom and was walking through the long-aisled shelves of books.

If you know me, you know this is the beginning of temptation for me. I love books and I love learning things, regardless of whether they are pertinent to me or anything at all.

On my way back from the restroom, my eye was caught by a book on a favorite author. I picked it up and started paging through it. Twenty minutes later I couldn’t remember why I was at the library at all. I had been derailed by a distraction.

Too often, that’s how we live life. We work toward defining some sense of who we are and what we are about in life. With great energy and a sense of burden, we figure out how we want to live, what we want to do, and how we will get there.

But within days, weeks, or a few years, we are completely off target from that sense of purpose. Daily living or other distractions have come in and swept us off course toward another destination or, worse yet, no destination at all. We are treading water en route to nowhere.

I do not want to live like that. I want to live in accordance with my sense of purpose.

There is the grand sense of purpose in connection with God’s grand purposes for the cosmos and history. That purpose of joining in with His kingdom work in the world, of seeking to know Him more, and being about His goodness and greatness in all things.

But then there is the more individual or community-oriented sense of purpose that we all develop within our own time and space and lives. We take time to push, pull, question, commit, realign, reflect, celebrate, and grieve all as movements toward clarity in our life purpose.

Too few take the time to do find that purpose at all. Even fewer live well in line with the sense of purpose they define.

But what would our lives look like if we did define a sense of personal or communal purpose within the grand purposes of God in this world?

What would our relationships and communities look like if we lived in alignment with that sense of purpose?

What satisfaction, joy, and peace might we develop in life if we were to set aside the distractions that lead us to tread water in order that we might live for that purpose?

I want to live from the center of things.

I want to know what I am and what I am not about, and live accordingly.