Mission

Isn’t it strange how everything can still be in flux and undetermined, but suddenly you find peace in being where you are?

All my life I have been searching for my mission. I’ve envied people who had specific dreams and who seemed to know exactly what they were working for. I’ve longed to find direction and I never could find it. I had been so busy looking and being anxious that I didn’t realize that I’m already living my mission. It’s like the person who suddenly realized after years of being annoyed at interruptions to his life that those interruptions were his life.

I don’t know how long I will continue my earthly life for. I suddenly recognize that it is useless to think of a mission as something that may take decades to fulfill when I may not even live long enough to see another week, or even another day.

What did God put me in this world for?

He put me in this world so that I can love and be loved in return.
He put me here so that I can build a little more of His kingdom in the world around me a little bit each day.
He put me here so that I can make mistakes and discover through them just how much he loves me.
He put me here so that I can share my greatest joy with everyone.

When I was 17, I had asked God to show me my mission in life. His response then had been, “Are you willing to suffer for me?” And he gave me to understand that as long as I could not answer ‘yes’ to that question, I would not be able to understand my mission.

Now, at 29, I finally understand. My mission has nothing to do with what career I should make or what activities I should do to make a difference. My mission is to love God and his people with all my heart and with all my strength and all my might – in whatever situation I find myself in. Everything else that I may do in my life is merely incidental. Everything else I do in life only has meaning in the light of this mission. And I finally understand that God is telling me that if I keep to my mission, He will handle the details of what, where, when and how.

If I return to God’s side today, there may be many things I would have regretted doing and perhaps many things I would wish I had done in my time on earth. But if God were to ask me, “Ann, did you fulfill the mission I gave you? Did you love with all your heart and all your strength and all your might?” I can honestly reply, “Lord, I didn’t do as well as I had hoped, but I tried my best.”

And I hope that God will spread His arms out in welcome and say to me as the Master did to the servant in the gospel parable, “Well done, my good and faithful child. You have done enough. Be with me now for all eternity.”