What is Life About?

What is life all about?  When we're just trying to get by and trying to keep up with everything that needs to be done, we may not think much about this question.  But then, all of a sudden, something happens - maybe we get fired from a job we had for a long time, there's an unexpected tragedy, or maybe there's just some sort of deep shift into a new chapter in our lives - and we feel like we just broke down on the side of the road and our engine won't start.  At these times we wonder what we really want in life, what will really make us happy, and what the meaning and purpose of it all is.

It's easy to settle for answers that get us back on the road.  A new job, a new relationship, or a degree program.  And all of these, of course, can be very important.  But if we're not careful, we may sell ourselves short - we may just placate that unsettling feeling in the depth of our soul that cries out for something more than a job, a relationship, or an education.  I suspect many of us feel that the answers we settle for are, at best, like a bag of chips or a granola bar from the gas station - that what we really want is to have a full meal, but we're not sure where to find one.  But life moves quickly, and we need to get back on the road, so we take what we can get and try to live with it.

The Christian tradition proclaims loudly that the purpose of human existence is nothing short of "partaking in the divine nature."  It offers us a vision of human life in which the deepest needs of our souls are satisfied to the full, now and forever - and in which we can learn to live the way we really want to deep down, with compassion, courage, patience, maturity, and integrity.  Christianity does not settle.  And these promises are offered to us as a gift, not contingent on a good resume, a compelling application, or attractiveness and charm.  In a world in which it's easy to feel like the meager portions of meaning and purpose that we can find one minute are likely to be snatched from us the next; in which we're trying our hardest to tread water and don't have the time or the strength to swim to land; in which we're always speeding down the highway with no real sense of where we're going, the words of the Good Shepherd are like a breath of fresh, mountain air: "I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly." (John 10:10)