Sunday, November 27, 2011

The Purpose for Being




“Everything comes from God alone. Everything lives by his power, and everything is for his glory.”


~Romans 11:36 (LB)


“True love does not demand a reward, but it deserves one.”


~Nicholas of Cusa


We may not know it yet—and who could fully know it?—but the fullest reason for our being is eternal and it never diminishes. God wills us into creation and from the least and smallest to the largest of beings our being is never less significant than any of these.


As soon as we begin to discover the level of significance the Lord has poured into our being we will doubt faith no longer. The purpose for our being is sacrosanct in the significance of our creation.


First we are loved; ours, then, is to attempt such love.


From God, Through God, and To God – the Nature of Being


The nature of our being reveals at least three things:


1. We are proof God exists, not that God needs to prove Divine existence. No, we are from God and nothing we could do or say or believe or not believe will change that solemn fact. We came from God.


2. The agency of creation was, is, and will ever be, through God. Everything we have, everything we are, and everything we can achieve is through the Lord—for divine purpose: that, for love.


3. Notwithstanding the above two facts, we exist, to the extent of our beings, to bring glory to God. Little else matters, because in this we understand and accept that we, and everything else created, are divine inputs with a purpose for divine output for the bequest of life. Living, however trite it may be, is privilege.


Our Single-Most Purpose for Being – To Bring Glory to God


Imagine the joy we bring to God when we exist, through the action of our being, just as he designed us to exist. That is the chief goal of humankind: to understand, accept, and deliver upon the simple purpose, individual by individual, of that life in accordance the purpose spoken into that life. The vehicle is love—to devote oneself to the virtuous and definitive purpose that brings glory to God.


Our purpose for being is simple but involved.


Simplistically, it can be drawn down to love; to exist is to worship God in the manner of our being by living joyfully within the context of our purpose. We can tell that complaint doesn’t fit within such a realm. Yet, the Lord knows we are not perfect in our love yet, for such a love is perfectly devoted and could not complain. But we do. Grace understands. Still, we exist now to love. We can go beyond complaint, and sin, to love now.


***


The fact of our being is a mystery to us. We don’t know how to love God but we do have ideas—this pleases the Lord. To love God, through our devotion, is to understand and live the purpose of our being.


© 2011 S. J. Wickham.

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