What Are You Looking For?

I enjoy Christmas holidays. It's the time of year when you have permission to be a child again. For quite a number of years now people have decried the commercialism of the holidays--Christmas especially, and rightly so. The response to Christmas runs the gamut from those who point out 'we don't know what time of year Jesus was born' to the other side of the spectrum, where little people are encouraged to 'tell Santa what you want'.

Quite a few years ago I was looking for a Christmas gift, and while I was perusing a table with items on it snow globes caught my eye, and I stopped to look. A snowglobe, is an encapsulated world. The object encased may be just about anything. A pretty house, a Santa, a snowman...encased in a world of water. When you shake the globe bits of 'snow' fly up and swirl around as if it's in a snow storm. Then they settle down and all is peaceful again.

In a way our world is like a snow globe on a large scale. However, unlike the snow globe, our world is not static. It doesn't stay the same. Time and tide wait for no man--just as the saying goes.

Several yeas ago someone in my family told me of a movie--Groundhog Day from 1993. It's story line is about a self-centered man that replays Groundhog day over and over, until eventually he gets it right--so to speak. Like the snow globe his world was somewhat static. The same things always happened, the people were always the same. Time was rewound daily like a cuckoo clock, and people were like cardboard cut outs in his days.

While our days do not replay day after day, many lives follow the same patterns day after day. Some astute people ask--'What am I here for? What is my purpose in this life?' They go about searching for their destiny, as it were looking for meaning for their existence.


Sometimes we can over analyze. We can get so wrapped up looking for the purpose in something --our life included--that we miss the chance to live.  In the movie 'It's A Wonderful Life', the main character, George Bailey, goes through his life doing the mundane duties that come before him. In the crucial moments when the chips are down, he feels like a failure. That's where Clarence the angel comes in to show him how wrong he is.

Jeremiah 1:5  "Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee, and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee; I have appointed thee a prophet unto the nations."

This scripture tells us that God had a purpose for Jeremiah. He had that purpose before Jeremiah was even conceived. God has a purpose for each person conceived. Everyone doesn't have the same duty, but our intrinsic purpose is to glorify God and to do His will. What God calls us to do may not be --in the eyes of the world--awe inspiring. It may not be anything that will cause people to sing our name in amazement and praise. However, we aren't looking for our purpose for being famous, just our purpose, and the words famous and purpose do not have the same meaning.

We do God (and our self) a disservice by confusing the two words. I prefer working quietly, doing my own tasks away from the crowd, away from notoriety. That isn't how everyone else wants to do their own work. With some, the applause is their reward.

At one time, for instance, the task of a good wife was to take care of her home and family. The task of a good husband was to provide for his wife and family. The two were supposed to work as a team taking care of their family's needs, physically and spiritually. This was their duty. This was their purpose. In the long run society benefited because the results were that the next generation raised from this environment was for the most part, good adults.

No one stood up and applauded the men and women for doing the mundane duties of raising families and caring for each other. Then it became blase to do what any dull and uneducated person could do, and more spectacular for the younger women to find jobs outside of the home. They received more applause, more of a sense of purpose--but did this fill the purpose place in their lives?

There are a number of lies Satan tells us, and women are especially vulnerable to these lies.We want to feel wanted/needed, loved, and important. When we bring home a paycheck we can show others that we have value. Without that slip of paper, Satan whispers to us that we aren't valuable. Society and sometimes husbands think of stay at home wives as somehow less valuable. For example more than once I have heard women talking of a mutual friend in this light: "Yes, she's just a stay at home mother, raising their children. What a waste, she's so smart and talented..." --What a waste? Who's better to raise her own children, teaching them what God would have them learn? A daycare worker who doesn't love them, or care about them?

Here's another one. A talk show host --supposedly a Christian--is fielding a call from a woman who wants to know about how he raised his daughter, and her role as a wife and mother. The woman obviously had the impression that he had the same revelation that tells Christian wives to 'love their husbands, and children, and be keepers at home' from the type of questions she asked him. His response was classic. "I don't want her sitting at home all day watching Oprah."

Well, there you have it. Stay at home moms just sit around all day and watch Oprah, and other television shows. This could come as a shock to people, not just men who have no clue, but all sorts of clueless people, but for most of my adult life (and younger life as well) for long stretches of time I either haven't had a t.v., or I chose not to watch it at all, and I've been a homekeeper mom while doing so for over forty years.  I've taught my children many good things during their pre-school years. I read to them, baked kitchen things, played games, took walks, taught them gardening, husbandry, and loved them--and did I mention read to them?

The point is that our purpose is first to find out what the will of God is for us, then do it. I wasn't original with that, I believe it was Baroness Maria Von Trapp that I saw as being credited for that statement. The second point is our purpose is to glorify God. If on this mission he gives us glory be that as it may, if not--so what? Third point is that like a secret agent, our mission is often done quietly in such a manner so as not to draw undue attention to self. It isn't the flamboyant person that is the most successful, it's the person like George Bailey, who does what they find to do at hand. It isn't an earthly paycheck, or the earthly accolades that will fill the 'purpose place' in a person's character. 


**Titus 2:4  "That they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, 5)  To be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed."