"Purpose" (part 2)

Yesterday I received a great reply to my post on finding purpose. I've asked permission to share the reply from a chronically ill friend here. Please remember, this is a personal note written to me, not an "article" written for this blog. But since I am using this space as my personal journal (and you all are welcome to read along) its a reply I want to record.

It helps to remember that God didn't create us to be useful. We weren't made to be "tools" - we were made for Communion with Him, for relationship. He made us because He loves us - not because we had to have some kind of "purpose."

I struggle a lot with this because in our culture our "quality of life" is somehow connected to how useful we are to society. (I'm totally useless. Just being alive creates medical debt and I can't do anything to alleviate that. I even looked into volunteer positions and I don't make the physical qualifications for that either!)

Its easy to slip into the idea that we surrender our lives to God so that He can "use" us, so that we can be a "tool" for the Kingdom, but that's not really what He's interested in. He can handle all the Kingdom work Himself! He doesn't "need" anyone (though He does allow us to work with Him at least in the transformation of our own lives) but He created us to become One with Him. That was the prayer of Christ - that we would be One with Him and each other, as the Holy Trinity is One. We were made for Communion with our Creator. and none of our life circumstances can take that away.

I know that people tend to think that healing is a requirement for a "good life" - that if God truly loves, then He will bring complete healing. But God's ways are not our ways, and what He wants for us is nothing less than the fullness of salvation, something we may not attain under different life circumstances. Plus I think people forget, even if we are completely healed - physical healing is only temporary. Every body eventually sickens and dies... even those who Christ raised from the dead eventually died. It's the transformation and healing of our broken souls that is the true eternal healing miracle.

Lazarus became a bishop (was it in Crete or Gaul - I can't remember), but he still returned to the earth that his body came from at the end of his (longer) earthly life. Yet Christ Himself had raised him from the dead after four days before His own Resurrection! You can't get much more miraculous than that -- unless you consider the complete healing of a soul transformed in union with Christ. That is the goal. Physical healing is only a side issue... :)

- Nonna Jennifer-Anne Buckley



 

You can find "part 1" of the post Nonna was replying to, here.