Finding Purpose

Sometimes, as the gold threads of daylight are waning
And all its brief moments are garnered like mist,
When the hand gently open on fringes of dawning
Soundlessly closes in a tightly-clenched fist,
As I try to separate beginning from ending
Only to see a perpetual blending
I am perplexed with deep melancholy
Vexed by life’s seeming futility

Do I stand at the end or a brand new beginning
As daylight surrenders to night’s turning page?
Is there any purpose to this life I am living?
Or are moments vague actors on time’s phantom stage?
I reach to touch a tangible truth
And long for the rush of undeterred youth
Is there a victory to this race I am in?
The ‘what was or what is or what might have been’?

I gaze to the heaven’s unfathomable distance
Layers of space upon space with no end
A vault that could swallow ten-thousand oceans
Or wink at an eternity in each grain of sand
Yet greater than this grand infinity
Is an undeniable eternity
A-waiting each soul that departs from this earth
So then, death is a beginning greater than birth

The somnolent stirring of leaves gives no answer
Exteriors seem cold, indifferent and base
Fear is an ache and hope a deep hunger
Nothing is permanent…nothing but grace
His grace is greater than anything
Our perfect Creator gives this life meaning
His grace saves the soul that will not die
And thus, by the grace of God go I

Janet Martin~

I’m not sure I captured in this poem the heart of my pondering…
It began with my 13 yr.old son’s off-handed remark about there really being no point to anything because everything ends…he was talking about fun.
Later my husband remarked that the problem with good moments is that they end…
And I asked him do they? Or is what we see as the end really the beginning of the next moment which could be better but we don’t know because we have not yet lived it. Okay, futile subject, I know. But I did get to thinking about how empty every moment is at its base level. We were created by God and within us is a place that only He can fill. And only as He fills that place can we find genuine peace and purpose. The created needs the Creator. Our life is a gift. Don’t we want to know the Giver?

Are those moments in the collage above moments of purpose...or futility?

I love the book of Ecclesiastes, and I love these verses from Ephesians 2:



But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. 6 And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 7 in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. 8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no one can boast. 10 For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.