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?

Occupy Our Calendars

Our times are in your hands:
But we count our times for us;
we count our days and fill them with us;
we count our weeks and fill them with our busyness;
we count our years and fill them with our fears.
And then caught up short with your claim,
Our times are in your hands!
Take our times, times of love and times of weariness,
Take them all, bless them and break them,
give them to us again,
slow paced and eager,
fixed in your readiness for neighbour.
Occupy our calendars,
Flood us with itsy-bitsy, daily kairoi,
in the name of your fleshed kairos. Amen1


1 (Brueggemann 2004, 147, Montreat Conference: Jubilee/June 1, 2000)

Brueggemann, Walter. Awed To Heaven, Rooted In Earth: Prayers Of Walter Brueggemann . Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2004.

Our Time

Once we begin to think about our place in time and geography, the mystery of where we happen to exist is great. Think of all of the other points in time we might have been born. I was born in the latter half of the 20th century; but, I could just as easily have been one of the many people born at the beginning of the 20th century, or in the 5th century of the current era, or 2000 years before the current era. I might have also been born in the year 3000 of the current era, if our world should happen to last that long.

Then, there is the mystery of where I was born. I am one of the fortunate ones to have been born in a wealthy country of the 20th century. It was not a wealthy country in the 5th century but, when I happened to come along, Canada was one of the greatest countries on the planet. The good fortune of living in a country with modern medicine, plentiful food, and clean drinking water is certainly something about which to be grateful. The mystery of how this happens is astonishing.

The reality is that all of us have arrived in the middle of the story. We appear at a time and a place that has been shaped by countless lives that have gone before us. We could not choose the kind of world into which we were born and there are limits on how much we can affect it now that we are here. We are in the middle chapters. It is not the beginning of the book; nor is it yet the end. Each of us finds our place in this story. Some of us work hard to find our place and make our mark. Others are content to drift with the tide of time and place.

Some of the lives that have come before us have been obscure and did little to shape this time and place. Others have put a permanent mark on the world as we know it. What mark will you leave upon this planet? What is your perception of the degree to which you want to shape the world? Each of us indeed has a choice. No one is requiring us to change the world. Yet each of us has the ability to do just that. There is a principle in the book of Esther which proposes that we may have been placed in our current circumstances for a reason. This principle suggests that all of us have choices that we can freely make. When opportunities to act come our way, we may choose to do nothing while others act and have an effect on the circumstances of the day; or we may choose to see the opportunity as something for which we are uniquely prepared and choose to act with resolve. Esther 4:14 can be paraphrased, "If you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance will arise from another place; but who knows but that you have come to your position for such a time as this?"