Purpose?

I joined Teach for America because I needed a purpose for my life. I think that I became discontent very early in my academic career because it felt like such a long wait before I could *do* something, something that mattered. Maybe wanting to 'make your mark' is a normal urge in a 20-something college student or grad, but my discontent grew out of the spiritual direction I had accepted for my life as well.

Genesis tells of a beautiful oneness between man and God. Man would toil in the maintence of garden, good work given to him by God, and God would walk with man. I imagine that God would listen not-unlike a parent who listens with a smile as a very young child tells of some new exploit. The parent already knows what the experience is like, everything about it in fact, but to see the joy and discovery in the eyes and face and words of the child brings some of that same emotion to the parent.

And even after the fall, purpose was something that was intimately tied to all of the patriarchs, the Biblical traditions, a man's interaction with God, and life in general. So it naturally seemed that a Purpose was a thing, or maybe *the* thing, that I needed to make my life a success.

I sought Purpose through engineering, sport, academics, volunteering, friends...and it all was very fleeting. The corporate engineering environment is full of inefficiency and waste. Sport is merely a context for the pursuit of fame or vanity or just the joy of movement, but none of these are sustainable. Academics is purely theoretical, and very rarely has an idea changed the world. No, it was always the application of the ideas that changed the course of human history. Volunteering and friends were very good things, good purposes, but they could not be a Purpose for me. Isaiah says to "Stop trusting in man, who has but a breath in his nostrils, of what account is he."

So Teach For America brought to me a Purpose, when even a purpose was lacking. And it has sustained me. I have never worked as hard or long as during summer institute. Defying my body to fail, my mind to lag and my eyes to droop, I worked to exhaustion, with a smile and joy on my face.

This has continued in my placement, Alief Middle School. Well, the will to work, the desire to succeed, the satisfaction in a effort spent and job well done. It is truly a Purpose.

But the discontentedness remains.

On Friday I went out to eat with some friends. I had a great time. We ate. We laughed. I was witty ;^) And I came home, exhausted. Yet I sat up. Instead of the rest of the laborer, I had...nothing.

I don't know if the fact of my brokenness, or in other words, the fact that sin is here, real and that my relationship with God is not a physical thing of God walking at my side, is the reason for my discontent. Will there ever just be a peace about me?

I don't know.

In the mean time:
"Fan into flames the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands. For God did not give us a spirit of timidity but a spirit of power, of love, and of self-discipline."
May I fan into flames the gifts given to me by God. May they be used for the improvement of this earth. And may your use of your gifts, give me boldness in the use of mine.