Last week I was pretty disheartened about life. It’s difficult to graduate from college and realize that this is my life. It isn’t going to start after anything else – I’ve made it. I have arrived at “real life.” Of course, now that I’m here I can look back and realize that it was always real life, but until now it has always been so easy to say that my life, my real life that I’ve been created to live is going to start after something else – after I can drive, after I graduate high school, after I finish my degree. There are no more afters… I’m here.
And so it is easy for me to get discouraged when I’m not sure where I’m going or what I’m doing or what the purpose of it all is. I cannot stand to not know the final destination or purpose. I will put my whole self and energy into something that I think is going somewhere, but I will exert little to no energy on a project that seems to have no purpose. Last week, nothing I did seemed to have purpose or greater meaning beyond just doing the task in front of me. I hate existing like that. Just thinking about it again now is putting me on edge.

But here’s the thing that I keep reminding myself – I do know my calling! I do know why I’m here, and I do know where I’m going. Ephesians 1:18-19 says: “I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you will know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe.” It’s that first part – the hope of His calling – that is helping to pull me out of my “life is pointless” slump.

I do know the hope of the Lord’s calling! I know that He is calling me for a purpose far greater than my own sense of purpose. He has called me and saved me by grace through faith so that I might walk in the things that He has prepared in advance for me to do (Ephesians 2:10). And I may not know what it’s going to look like, but I know He’s called me to bring Him glory. Because I am created by the Living God, I know that I’m in the right historical time period; that I was born into the right circumstances; that I have the right skills. Because I know Christ, I do know what I am called to do today – to go to work and to do my job faithfully as if working for God and not for man, to love and pray for and honor my family, to be honest in my dealings with people, to take care of my body that is the Temple of the Holy Spirit, to spend time in His Word and in His Presence. And I trust that if I am faithful in those things, then I will honor Him and bring Him glory, which I know is the over-arching purpose of my life.

It’s really quite exciting when I start to think about it! I can’t see the big picture right now, from my tiny little lens into history, but one day, I will stand before the Father and He will show me how He pulled together all the little things I did with a desire to honor Him into a bigger story. He may show me how the extra spell check I did on an email about a Middle School Lock-In made a perfectionist parent read it instead of ignore it, and then how their child met Christ through the youth program. He may show me how my family was strengthened by the prayers I pray in silence.

I don’t know what He’ll show me. But I pray that I can persevere in the times that I can’t see the purpose, knowing that the Lord can see it and trusting that He can use my tiny amount of faithfulness to increase His glory.