Every life has a purpose. God has a purpose for every person. However, when things go bad, and your life has been turned upside down, it is hard to find a purpose. It’s difficult to think about the meaning of your life when you are doing all you can to simply survive.
The prophet Jeremiah and the people of Israel illustrate the point. Jeremiah lived at a time when the mighty Babylonian army was invading the capital city of Jerusalem. The walls of the city were broken down, the temple was destroyed, and the leading citizens were taken into exile. The people of Israel had once understood themselves as God’s chosen, God’s instruments for the redemption of the world. Now they had been reduced to a struggle to stay alive. Out of the experience of Jeremiah and his people, we find two lessons for what to do when it is difficult to find your purpose.
The first lesson is to accept reality. Jeremiah’s lifelong mission was to convince his people to accept the reality of their situation. He told them that they were going to be taken into exile into Babylon, and there was nothing they could do about it. After seventy years they could return home, but in the meantime they should allow themselves to be deported to Babylon, and there build houses, plant gardens, and raise their families. Jeremiah met a lot of resistance to his message. Some of his fellow citizens wanted to fight the Babylonian army. Others wanted to flee to Egypt. Neither were feasible options. The best they could do would be to accept the reality of their situation.
The other lesson is to trust that God still has a purpose for your life. The seventy years will pass. We still have a reason to live. When circumstances lead us to reconsider our life’s mission, there are a number of directions we might go. We might scale down our vison and concentrate on caring for our family. We might redouble our efforts to fulfill our mission, recognizing that the opposition we meet is a sign that we are on the right track. We might adjust our mission to allow for the people we have met who now share our struggle. We don’t stay in Babylon forever. God has a plan for our lives for a future with hope. God still has a purpose for our lives.
One of the great things about the way that God has made us is that even as we are entering a difficult season of our lives, we can envision life on the other side. So we accept the reality of our circumstances and still live with hope. In our sermon this Sunday we will talk about what we do when our purpose is hard to find.