Purpose and Illusion

What is it about me that I am always looking out beyond the horizon for my happiness? I am blessed beyond belief. My life is full, I have been given more than any man has a right to and am surrounded by those I love and who love me. But there is a niggling inkling in the back of my mind. If only I had… then I would really be happy. If only I lived…then I would be really happy. There is a picture in my mind of the blissful place; the perfect setting, the picture with no wants and no flaws. It’s not always there, but in times of quiet reflection, or times of stress, there’s no telling just when it may appear, but suddenly it’s there in my mind. It is not a sinful picture (most of the time). It’s just a picture of a place different than where I am right now.

The more I entertain this picture, this illusion, the more power it begins to exert on me. I start to be dissatisfied with the blessings that fill my life now. It starts to change my mood, my perspective on the things surrounding me starts to get dark and cloudy. It starts to alter the way I view people. People become either a barrier to overcome on the road to my illusive paradise, or they become a means to get me there. No longer are they children of God, dearly loved and meant to be served, but rather objects to be used to gratify my desires or obstructions to be battered down and removed from the road to happiness.

The central illusion, the lie, is that there is something in this world that will satisfy the cravings of my heart. I was made for God. I was made for heaven. Augustine said that our hearts are restless until they find their rest in God. Pascal said that in the heart of every man there is a God shaped vacuum. My heart yearns for God and it yearns for the satisfaction and rest that will not be mine until heaven. There is no denying that even as I follow hard after God and experience more joy and satisfaction than I ever thought possible I am still aware of a hunger within. I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.

It seems that the best that I have found on earth is to be who I was created to be and to use the gifts and resources that He has entrusted to me to do the things that He has prepared in advance for me to do. I keep hearing the Scottish brogue of a character in a movie called Chariots of Fire. The movie is based on a true story about British runners in the 1920’s. One of them is Eric Liddell. Liddell was a pastor and a missionary to China, but was also an exceptionally fast runner. In one scene, his sister is trying to talk him out of running in the Olympics because she is afraid that he will become enamored with the fame and never go to China. He responds, “I believe that God made me with a purpose and that purpose is China, but He also made me fast, and when I run I feel His pleasure.”

I believe that God has made each of us with a purpose and when we do what He has created us to do, we feel His pleasure. In fact, what we experience is the presence and the power of the Spirit coursing through us as we exercise the gifts that He has given us to do the work He has entrusted to us. Paul tells us that we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do the good works that He has planned in advance for us to do. When we acknowledge this and decide to trust Him and to acknowledged who he has created us to be and then do the works that He has put before us, we are on the path to experience Him more and more in our daily lives.

This doesn’t get rid of the ache for heaven, but the sweet fellowship with His Spirit transforms the ache from a driving pain to a sweet reminder that there is more waiting for us.