What’s My Purpose?

I have been thinking a lot about ‘purpose’ lately. It was the focus of a recent workshop I ran in one of our learning communities last week. Being aware of and connecting to our purpose and what gives meaning to our life is fundamentally important to our well-being. It is also part of the capabilities identified in Growing deep.  Rather than purpose being something to be aware of, it is actually a skill-set to develop. Purpose from the wellbeing perspective is “being clear about one’s core values and deeper motivation and being able to apply them in one’s daily life”.

Let’s just pause that thought for a minute and think back to those days post Jesus’ crucifixion. I am trying to imagine what the family and followers of Jesus thought about their ‘purpose’ in life having witnessed his horrendous death and burial. I suspect they might have thought “All hope is gone! Everything we believed is a lie. What will we do with our lives now? Back to fishing? Back to domestic chores? Back to having to prove my worth?’ Importantly they must have been wracked with grief and confusion and struggled to see the point of anything.

And then God acted, very differently from what they expected. Everything changed, there was light and life, Jesus was alive and present, in a new way.

Jesus’ family and followers were given a new lens, meaning and purpose to life and were equipped for this new way of being, seeing and acting. This equipping didn’t happen immediately, Jesus gave his followers time to heal, make sense of what had happened and to be in community to clarifying their core purpose.

So here we are at the start of Term 2 with who knows what’s ahead for us. What we do know is that God has planted in us ‘purpose’ and that is the reason we do what we do, regardless of what external factors emerge which we will never have control of. God has created us in God’s image, has filled us with God’s Spirit of love, peace, patience and kindness and has given us unique gifts to use in the service of others.

As we launch into the term, remember your purpose, what gives your life meaning, joy and energy, a purpose created and enabled by God. Tap into and be reminded of that purpose daily, live that in your work, with family, friends and community. Join together, like the disciples did, with others who share a common purpose within your community.  Importantly take time to reconnect to the Source, to be still and mindful of God’s work in and through you. What a great adventure is ahead…life in all its fullest!

Ephesians 3:14-19 “My response is to get down on my knees before the Father, this magnificent Father who parcels out all heaven and earth. I ask him to strengthen you by his Spirit—not a brute strength but a glorious inner strength—that Christ will live in you as you open the door and invite him in. And I ask him that with both feet planted firmly on love, you’ll be able to take in with all followers of Jesus the extravagant dimensions of Christ’s love. Reach out and experience the breadth! Test its length! Plumb the depths! Rise to the heights! Live full lives, full in the fullness of God.”

Mignon Weckert