Why Am I Here?
It’s not a light question, but in our heart of hearts we find it a persistent one. For me I usually ask this when I feel like all is ho-hum or rutted in my day-to-day life.
I know I am here to glorify and love God as His daughter, a wife, mother, sister, friend and missionary. But, why does that fall short to fill me up with a sense of purpose, so often? Why do I want more for my life as I live out my days and the uniqueness of my calling as God’s in this world?
Sometimes it is the simple reality that I let what is breathtakingly beautiful become somehow ordinary. As I breathe in and out in health and those I love do the same, isn’t every one of those breaths a miracle? And if this is all so extraordinary why do I live it too many times as drudgery?
Can you relate? (Maybe you often appreciate the miracle of life, so I truly, humbly applaud you and thank you for living full of glorious purpose.) If you, even sometimes, struggle like I do, then I’d like us to take a journey together.
Lift up your eyes and look to the heavens:
    Who created all these?
He who brings out the starry host one by one
    and calls forth each of them by name.
Because of his great power and mighty strength,
    not one of them is missing.
~ Isaiah 40:26 (NIV)
We serve an awesome God. He names every one of what is quickly becoming to science an interminable amount of stars. Furthermore, He remembers each name He has given to them. Yet, He is the God who simply, beautifully, intimately and infinitely knows me and my name. Me?! In all of my smallness there is infinite glory because He is the only true Living One, inhabiting eternity, and He lives in me, in you, in US!
Holding this perspective, our simple breathing, our simply being is miraculous and awe-inspiring. And our great and loving God wants to touch our deepest places with this truth. Thus, His desire is that we rest forever in the infinitely joyous answer to why we are here. We are here to be in His Spirit, bringing Heaven to Earth as we celebrate His eternal purpose to make all things new. And we are currently in that process moving from ‘one degree of glory to another‘ as II Corinthians 3:18 says.
Does it seem too simple, or too lofty, unattainable, or even cliche?
I can understand if it does, I remember a time when I was speaking high and lofty things and contemplating Heaven with my dear mama, now 21 years home with the Lord. All she could say was, ‘but we have to live HERE, Abby.’ Basically saying when the hard things come and the wearying ways of life–how do we remember just being is enough?
I don’t have too many solid answers to that question. But, I do know that increasingly my own ambition detached from God’s perspective is fading away. While I still have dreams to touch many people as an author, speaker and coach, I know the end of that path in and of itself is vast wilderness instead of undeniable purpose.
I know that I am learning to choose the simple being of life. As my brother often says, ‘I just want to be dancing and praising in Heaven with my wife and kids.’ Our purpose becomes smaller in its simplicity around core relationships, yet there is an infinite depth of joy found within it. I have been pouring my dreams out to God, surrendering and saying, ‘I choose a simple life of loving well over any BIGness of impact or seeming purpose.’
The truth is, maybe one day I will achieve BIG purpose in the eyes of others. Maybe, I will speak to big crowds, or have a book which reaches multitudes and even earn lots of money doing it. I don’t know and I don’t want to say ‘no’ if those opportunities come.
But my, and our, truest destiny is the one where we choose to be. Be God’s. Bein His Love. Be captivated by His beauty touching all that is good. And become smaller and smaller in our own eyes in the face of His infinite reality.
Practically, this embrace of true destiny does make for a powerful life. Humility in relationships which gives and receives forgiveness. Passion for a better world that will cause us to act in radical ways. And most, an infinite well of thankful love which will preach better than any spoken sermon ever did.
Yes. Increasingly choosing to live as whole beings who reflect God to a broken world, is truly the life for which we have been created and are being redeemed. So, when this blip of life is done, our perfect purpose and fulfillment of destiny will only have just begun.
Friend, rest with me in this, today, always and forevermore, Amen.
Yours for the journey,
Abigail
