Purpose

A phrase I heard often in my childhood was, "You did it on purpose!"  This meant I was accused of deliberately causing whatever incident had happened; it had been no accident. My apology was not accepted because I had acted wilfully!

Purpose is the word I was given for 2018 by my church fellowship. Although I picked the word from a bag containing many other words, it seems to have chosen me. It has been 'whispering' to me ever since, almost like an earworm! Sometimes I hear it as produce, perform, propose, or even purchase.  But I recognize these as distortions of the word.  I think perhaps they are words that offer an easier way, words that entice me (according to my Enneagram personality type).

A question I ask myself:

How do I stay true to this word? How do I flesh out its meaning for my life this year? 

I must admit that 2018 for me did not begin with purpose but rather with a nasty cold that was quite debilitating and left me helplessly stranded on the couch with nothing I could do, certainly nothing that had purpose (except perhaps to get better by resting!). At night I felt myself dealing with insomnia, so I did a lot of reading. Through my reading I heard some wise voices that calmed  my earworm:

"[T]he fundamental experience of God is one of being at peace and unafraid since God is so much stronger than everything else." (Marcus Peter Rempel, in Life at the End of Us vs. Them, quoting James Alison's interpretation of the prophet Isaiah's encounter with the divine, p. 213)

That statement gave me cause for some reflection and a gradual sense of peace about my word and its implications. It also reminded me of the strong and courageous women portrayed in a coffee-table book of paintings and stories by the artist Ray Dirks and a group of people who desired to honour their mothers and grandmothers for their courage and faith at a time when their world was falling apart.

As I gazed at their faces and read their stories (including those of my great-grandmother, grandmother and mother), I wondered what these women would have thought of the word purpose when their loved ones were taken from them, their homes plundered and burned, and their lives in danger.

Continuing to quote from Rempel: "[T]he marker of genuine encounter with the Great Mystery is this fundamental experience of peace -- and a resulting peaceableness of character. When the well is deep, all drink from the same great aquifer. But deep wells are not arrived at by scratching a little here and a little there. They are the product of long digging in one place. Deep wells are dug by people who choose a home." (Ibid.)

What home could these women choose when they really had no choice?  

They chose, first of all, to be at home in God, the eternal. They did this with determination and purpose.

That is one thing I can do. 

"The process of life demands that some things pass away to make room for others. The leaves fall, to be replaced, next spring, by new buds. Generation succeeds generation. Last year's dying fruit is this year's seed. It is the pattern of the creation.
But God never departs.  . . .  In [God] is a rest which cannot be disturbed, a love which lasts forever." (Augustine of Hippo)