What's the Point?

I have been thinking lately about the purpose of life.  Rick Warren wrote a whole book about it called The Purpose Driven Life.  Don't worry, I don't intend to be so long-winded.  It's just that in my younger years I seemed to have more of a purpose.  You know when you feel that you are actually doing something and contributing in some way.  We always talked about 'doing the Lord's work' - whatever that means.  Actually it seemed to mean doing things to do with church and getting other people to join us and come to our meetings.  Everything we did was geared to encourage people into the building and get involved with whatever projects we were doing at the time.

Now, the older I get, I find that I am no longer able to be busy doing things all the time as I was before.  I considered myself an encourager and pray-er and was happy going in prayer teams to stand alongside others in their work.  But now a sense of 'redundancy' creeps in and I ask myself 'what is the purpose of my life?'  I feel a bit like Solomon writing Ecclesiastes as he looks at life and comes to the conclusion that everything is meaningless.  It's almost like saying 'What's the point of it all? What's the purpose of life?'  It reminds me of the old sacred song ‘What is your purpose in life?’

As I get older I realise that the purpose of being a Christian is not about doing or being seen to be active but more about having a deep friendship with the Almighty.  It’s more about who we are rather than what we are doing.  The purpose of light is not to go everywhere in order to actively dispel darkness but rather to just be light.  It should fulfill the purpose of being what it is - light - and the natural consequence is that it will dispel the darkness wherever it is.  But it doesn’t set out to conquer darkness; it just is what it is.  And so my purpose in life is not to be busy trying to accomplish tasks or projects but to have such a relationship with and be so wrapped up in Him that wherever I am, He is seen; to be the person God made me; just simple being.