Ne valent pas grand chose,
Elles passent en un instant, comme fanent les roses
This weekend felt long and centering with a healthy dose of perspective. I am thankful.
I was lucky enough to get the day off on Friday to go to Tom’s grandpa’s funeral. It was good to honour a great man. Funerals, and this one most recently, tend to wake me up a little as far as being mindful of leaving a legacy is concerned. It’s not something we start when we’re thirty. It’s something we started, intentionally or not, as early as our childhood (but can still control now). I read my beloved Psalm 90 as a reminder of the point of it all.
I was at Tom’s parents’ house for most of the weekend (Friday too) and enjoyed it so much. On Saturday night we spent some time with Shaun and Claire, and it was inspiring to hear about how Shaun quit his job but is continuing his work uninterrupted, only now without being under poor management. People on his team quit in his wake to follow him. That’s awesome! To me that says it all about how he treats the people he manages. I love to hear people talk about what they’re good at and where they’re making a difference. Passion always has uplifted me, though, and I do know why.
I listened to a Jeff Henderson sermon a few months ago about discerning God’s will for our lives— a seemingly difficult and shrouded task if there ever was one. After hearing the talk, though, perhaps not so shrouded. In short, he said that we can consider our uniqueness and the things we are “naturally good at” as clues concerning what we were meant by God to do. That isn’t, obviously, to say we should not try to improve in what we’re weak at, but to embrace what comes easily and what we love based on the skills we more or less just find ourselves with, that makes total sense to me. When someone is doing what they’re meant to be doing— what they’re here for— there is nothing unexciting about that.
It is not only mainstream Christianity that feels this. Paulo Coelho refers to it as a “personal legend” in The Alchemist. Scott Adams’ unabashedly blasphemous but compelling God’s Debris calls it “contributing to the realization of God’s consciousness.” There’s something inherently right about living within your purpose, and when I hear about people who are, it fires me up, because it supports what I love (progression, achievement, improvement) and has little room for the things that annoy me (apathy, laziness, waste.)
The glory of God is man fully alive.
