Part 2: What's the Point?

Ready, Set… Life!
What’s the Point?

When I was a kid there was a place behind our neighborhood where I and my friends would play. Although we never owned our house where I grew up, my parents were able to rent the same single family home for over 20 years. The street we lived on was a real neighborhood row tucked between apartment complexes and public assistance housing. My best memories are of those long Alaska summer days when the sun was shining, and the grass was tall.I can remember grabbing a stick and running through the waist high, hay-like grass swishing the stick back and forth. I would pretend it was a machete and I was hacking my way through some dense Amazon jungle.

The truth, of course, what that not only did I bear a stick in the northernmost state of the union, but that stick did very little in the way of clearing the brush. At the end of the day the grass was still there, albeit a little more trampled than it was the morning before. But even that would pass overnight as the dew collected the stalks rebounded, and would stand in anticipation of my next adventure.If I’d been a deep thinker as a child I might have seen the metaphor of life in the futile whipping of the grass with my ill suited sword-stick. But doesn’t life see to imitate that scene sometimes? We get up every day and beat at the grasses of responsibility or duty. And while the grass seems to lay a little lower at the end of the day the truth is, that without the proper tools, we’re just beating it about until it rises again the next morning.We all yearn to know if there is really purpose to life.

In last weeks message I talked about finding what really matters in life. Perhaps it is surprising at first to consider that YOU are what matters! Its pretty simple really… you matter to God, and that makes you valuable.Its in this truth the answer to this week’s question is revealed; the “point”, or the purpose of this life, is to live as one who knows they are valuable to God. With this knowledge comes the realization that if you matter to God so does everyone else. When that truth comes home to your heart, you are ready to discover your purpose in life. Just as learning that God loves you can compel you to love Him back (see I John, Chapter 4), the scripture tells us that receiving God’s love will cause us to love others:

"Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another." I John 4:11

Jesus said it in His own words when He echoed the command in Deuteronomy 6:4-6;36

"Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" 37 Jesus replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments." Matthew 22:36-40

There’s really no mystery here. People are what really matters. And the purpose of life? Love the people who matter. In doing so, you are loving God. So wherever you are, no matter your occupation or vocation this is THE point of all your life. Love people. Next week I’ll talk about “how”.

If you’ve missed the previous message you can click HERE to listen