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?”

How We Spend Our Days

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” - Annie Dillard, The Writing Life

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives; and how we spend our lives, of course, determines the person we become.” - Keith Shields, Thirst

If I spend my days writing, I will become a writer. If I spend my days leading, I will become a leader. If I spend my days painting, I will become a painter. If I spend my days wasting time on frivolous pursuits, I will become a waster of time.

At a certain point in my life I dreamed of becoming a traveling singer-songwriter who made his living as an entertainer. I spent some time writing songs, singing, and even entertaining. Yet, I spent much more time working as a Lab Scientist in a Molecular Diagnostic Lab, studying theology at Regent College, being a father to my children, and being a husband to my wife. In that time, I became a Lab Scientist, a student, a father, and a husband (occasionally I got the order of these wrong). I did not become a professional entertainer. How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives; and how we spend our lives, of course, determines the person we become.

Today is the day to take a one or two hour meditative break. Get away to a quiet place, alone with your thoughts, and make some decisions about how you want to spend your days, how you want to spend your life, and the person you want to become. One or two hours may not be enough. Perhaps you will need to take two or three days away at a retreat centre in quiet meditation, deep thinking, and active listening to your mind and spirit. Retreats of this nature work best when guided by the ancient words of scripture and the companioning words of others who have been in a similar place. Annie Dillard spent a full year in quiet contemplation on the banks of Tinker Creek, meditating, exploring, and writing about what she saw. In the process, she became an influential writer and penned Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.

Who will you become? Time moves on at a constant pace; but feels ever more rapid. The way we spend our hours, will be the way we spend our days, will be the way we spend our lives, and will determine who we are. Will we be unintentional or intentional about the person we become?

Follow-Up to Much Afraid

The Much Afraid album contains a song called "Crazy Times." Jars of Clay band members have said in interviews that this song is about how prayer is often "the last place we go." I understand what they mean. We go about life without a thought about God and think that we are fine - for a while. Life soon gets crazy and we find that we need more than just ourselves to get through the complexities of life. Through our tears, we realize that we are not self-sufficient, we cry out to God but, we do not know how to pray. We have lost the ability to rely on a personal God whom we have ignored for so long. We climb the ladder of prayer but there are missing rungs. The ladder has been neglected and damaged and we have failed to notice until we reach out to use it. God, save me from these crazy times!

Crazy Times (Listen to it here.) 

(Words and music by Dan Haseltine, Stephen Mason, Matt Odmark, and Charlie Lowell, copyright Essential Records, 1997.)

You're cold that way
And that's why you say
The things that you say
You can't attract
The things that you lack
You're trying in vain 

It seems it's always the crazy times
You find you'll wake up and realize
It takes more than your saline eyes
To make things right 

You spiral down
You've broken your crown
You don't feel like a queen
You've seen the proof
But you're still crying wolf
You'll never believe 

It seems it's always the crazy times
You find you'll wake up and realize
It takes more than your saline eyes
To make things right 

You try to climb a broken ladder
Grip the missing rungs
And fall down, down, down
Seems sometime ago you said
This wouldn't last
And now you sit here crying 

Beside your bed
You feel left for dead
You kneel in the dark.. 

It takes more than your saline eyes
To make things right 

It seems it's always the crazy times
You find you'll wake up and realize
It takes more than your saline eyes
To make things right