Fr Jim Cogley
Without goals and purpose we so easily get stuck in a rut and a rut is just a grave with the ends flattened out! Someone described a life without purpose this way: Every day you get out of the same old bed and go to the same old bathroom and you see the same old face in the same old mirror. You go to the same old wardrobe to choose from the same old clothes and sit down at the same old breakfast table to eat the same old breakfast. Then you get go to the same old spot and get into the same old car and head down the same old road to the same old job. There you work all day for the same old pay, next to the same old people under the same old boss. Then you come home and sit in that same old chair to watch that same old television. At the end of the day you go to the same old bed and sleep that same old way so you can get up the next morning and start the same old routine all over again.
Perhaps this reflection on a life devoid of purpose sounds familiar and even a bit close to the bone but without a sense of God’s plan and purpose for our lives that’s what life is. God did not create us and he certainly didn’t redeem us to live a purposeless existence and eventually die from boredom. It may be that we have to seek him afresh to make it more clear as to what our life is about, but there’s no search that could be more rewarding and worthwhile. Our life does have a purpose and we find it not by relying on the circumstances that motivate us but by truly living the reality that most deeply matters to us.