For What Was I Created or ...

“For what was I created?” or, “For such a time as this?”

Our majority culture as well as contemporary church culture will often encourage us to explore the gifts and abilities that make us who we are and challenge us to do those things for which we are uniquely created. That is, we are told to find out who we are and the thing for which we were created. We are told that true fulfillment in life is only found in doing those things for which we have been created as if there was only one thing we could do. I have certainly espoused this philosophy, and, indeed such an approach has validity.

However, today I would ask us to consider another way of looking at these things. There are times when we need to consider whether we have been made, “for such a time as this.” In the ancient book of Esther (written in approximately 330 BCE), Mordecai asks Esther to consider if it is not “for such a time as this” that she has been made queen in the courts of King Xerxes (Esther4:14). This was the appropriate question for her and may sometimes be the question for our lives. We are placed in a world that needs truth and grace - justice and love - and there are judicious times when you or I may be the perfect person to be the expression of God’s love in our world. It is a question worth asking ourselves: “Am I here for such a time as this?”