Discover the Meaning…of Life

When my grandson, ‘Braylon Breeches’ was younger, he would come with the family for a visit. And, being a child at heart, I knew what he liked. I would grab the shovel from the garage and announce, “Hey Breeches, let’s go to the garden and find stuff!” So, we’d head outside to the garden and I would dig down into the dirt. And, what did we find? Well, we weren’t looking for anything in particular, but we both knew what joy would be found in our discoveries. We found rolly pollys, worms, spiders, bulbs, roots you name it. We didn’t find something we were looking for, we found whatever was there…

As I reflect back on our precious grandson-grandpa time together, I can’t help but recognize the lesson we found in the dirt. Life is discovered in discovery. The joy of living isn’t in what you already know, it’s in discovering what you don’t know. Everything God has done has a meaning and a point and a purpose. Absent any meaning, life becomes a drudgery; a perpetual passing of time; a gameshow replayed out over a lifetime. The meaning of life is found in the meaning. And just like my favorite discoverer and I found out, you don’t know what you are going to find until you start looking!

The trouble with adulthood isn’t in getting older, it’s when by habitual repetition, you stop looking for the rolly pollys; when you think you already know what’s out there; when you give up on finding something new. As you sit there immersed in the conundrum of the meaning of life, ask yourself, are you still looking for the answer? If you seek, you’re going to find, but only if you persist in the seeking. Your full-time adult responsibility isn’t just to work at your job, it’s to work at discovering the meaning behind things. The clues are all around you. Don’t let a scientist or a theory or a so-called educated person talk you into surrendering your pursuit. Do not settle for a meaningless existence or accept that you are here at this moment in time via some random expression of nature or evolution. Both of those things are real, but they’re only the surface of the garden. The treasure is down a little deeper.

Life isn’t happenstance or random (sound familiar?). There’s supposed to be a point to it. How sad it must be to be persuaded that there is no greater purpose and that you, through some cosmic magic, are just here to live out 70 or 80 years, acquire as much stuff as you can and then die. How tragic! Life, your life, is a helluva lot more than just the here and now. But, the here and now is important! We’ve all been cast in a drama of epic proportions. The storyline is familiar; good versus evil. We all have an assigned role, but the character in that role is of our own choosing. We’re supposed to be the starring role, but ignorance regarding our greater purpose renders us extras, bumbling about in the background, without any lines! It’s high time that you find out your starring role.

Finding meaning is like finding anything, you have to be willing to look. Stop simply accepting everything that happens to you and start seeking to understand why. Are you winning? Great, why is that? Are you getting your butt kicked? Not so good, but why is it happening? Those simple, unpretentious discoveries are going to lead you to something; something great!

Life often appears to be an unwieldy beast fraught with challenges, oddities and absurdities. Many times there appears to be no sound explanation for why things happen. But, make no mistake, everything happens for a reason and whether that reason is positive or negative, it exists and is not beyond your ability to understand it. Your understanding, however, comes about as a result of a discovery; a discovery you can comprehend if you remain willing to look. I should add that the world will offer you many of the apparent reasons why, but if those reasons break down in logic at any point along the way, they’re probably not true. The truth is a cohesive whole with no holes in it (pun intended 😉 ) and the contradiction is a clue that you haven’t found the truth yet. God’s Word, the logos is flawlessly logical, but like any literary masterpiece requires more than a cursory reading. It’s worth your time to understand it.

Discovering the meaning of life is no more complicated than discovering the hidden world beneath the soil. All that’s required is a heart that wants to know and a mind that’s willing to pursue it. I know of no human being living who earnestly asked God for an understanding and never received it. Often the signposts show up, but habit man; I already know man, gives up on his quest in favor of the familiar. Familiarity certainly feels better, but it never finds the gold. The best fruit can only be found by going out on a limb!

Your life is important enough to take the time required to understand. God never intended for you to drift through life, wandering from one seemingly unrelated circumstance to the next. He wants you to know… The question is, do you?

Braylon Breeches is 8 now and has since dropped the “breeches” moniker. I think it’s time for me and him to go on a discovery hike. I know I need it…

Just some good thoughts…