Advent Reflections 7: Finding Our Purpose

 “For we know that nothing we do for the Lord is ever useless” 1 Cor 15:58 

At the beginning of a new year, many of us have hopes and dreams as well as fears for the future. So now seems like a good time to consider our purpose. A sense of purpose can be powerful enough to keep us motivated through difficult times, but it can be hard to find, especially when we are demoralised. The simple fact is, much of what we do feels pointless and too small to make a difference, a drop in the ocean.

Over the Christmas period, we have considered God’s awesome creation, made with love, the frustration of living in a world of sin and death (and the need tolament the tragedies of life) and his great plan for redemption through Emmanuel. This is where the final part of the Bible’s story comes into play for us: the consummation of all our hopes, the resurrection and redemptionof the whole world.

I have been inspired by a short story by JRR Tolkien called “Leaf, by Niggle”, which describes a man called Niggle who 

“was the sort of painter who can paint leaves better than trees. He used to spend a long time on a single leaf, trying to catch its shape, and its sheen, and the glistening of dewdrops on its edges. Yet he wanted to paint a whole tree, with all of its leaves in the same style, and all of them different.”

He dreamed of a great tree, in a beautiful landscape but only had time to complete part of his great painting before he died. But he discovered in heaven that his tree was there: what he had designed and worked for and only partially painted was there in all its fullness. This is what it means to hope in resurrection: our work has an eternal resonance. We work for God, dreaming of a big tree, but it is not until Jesus’ return that we see the consummation of everything we have laboured for.

So we weep in the face of death, but we look forward to the time when the “last enemy” (death) is destroyed in the resurrection. We work as part of God’s great plan to restore and redeem all things, encouraged by every good thing we are able to change but Hebrews 11 recounts the tales of Bible characters through the ages from Abraham, Moses, Samson and all the rest, who are held up as heroes of the faith for attempting great things for God and yet “none of them received all that God had promised.” We are encouraged and cheered on by a great cloud of witnesses who dreamt of great things like us but achieved only a little of them.   

At the beginning of a new year, I encourage you to dream big. Ken Costa writes that “the Christian task is to find God’s way in the world and work to change the world”, and reminds us that “we are placed in the world, not by random accident, but by God’s design for a distinct purpose”. Look for how you can best serve and use your skills to be part of God’s restoration of all that is good, and know that your work is not in vain.  

Another question this story raises is the response of others: Niggle knew that “it would need some concentration, some work, hard uninterrupted work, to finish the picture.” But there was no shortage of interruptions from well-meaning people, both visitors and his neighbour who needed help. 

“Very few of them knew about his picture, of course; but if they had known, it would not have made much difference. I doubt if they would have thought that it mattered much.”  

Churches can be particularly bad at this: completely ignoring the effort involved in becoming a great writer or solving a difficult problem in the health service and asking "why aren’t you coming to help with the coffee morning"? There’s a tendency to beat ourselves up about all sorts of things, when it would be better to feel provoked into doing the main thing God has for us as well as we possibly can. 
Let’s not forget that the first demand our religion places upon us is the “ministry of competence”: to love others by being competent and diligent at the work we have to do. If you are a carpenter, you need to focus on consistently making good tables before you fix the church roof! 

Here’s a new year challenge to us all: as well as seeking to live out the great purpose God has for us, let us seek to recognise and encourage good work in others rather than getting in the way, especially if other people’s dreams are different from our own experience. Who knows, you might even learn something...

See also:

• Full list of reflections for Advent (inspired by Emmanuel!) and Lent (putting faith into action) 
• Alex Booer's blog: great books to inspire you about work and life
• There is A Day: A Phatfish song inspired by 1 Cor 15