Minding Your Ps...

No need to tell you where I was, but it was wonderful.

It was high summer and I was on vacation, visiting a location I had been many times before. The sun was setting, I was alone, standing on a quiet country road at the head of an expansive bean field. The crop was low and plush, and you could see all the way to the end. The fading sunlight had been replaced by a host of fireflies, pulsing their glow over the field with a soft, glorious caress. I could barely catch my breath for the reverence of the moment.

It was a pocket of earth that had the strongest sense of peace, of innocence, a place where you could smell the organic fruit of pure and unadulterated life. For me, there was no other place like it on earth.

Now, there are many sunsets, bean fields, and fireflies to experience, so why was this place so special? It was because there was more there for me than just the physical environment. It wasn't just a place. In my past history there, it was where I'd found a sense of place. it was also where I, long ago, had my first glimpse of true purpose in the world. And too, it was where I found a community of people who have changed who I am today. In that high summer evening, I was awed by the effect of more than just some natural environment. A sense of Place. People. Purpose. That's what made it special.

This experience reminded me that, while we're told to mind our Ps & Qs (an old idiom that calls us to always be on our best manners), perhaps our decorum would be better informed by spending time just on our Ps: Our sense of people, place, and purpose. Our Qs, whatever those may be, can come later.

Very often we get to enjoy just one or two of these Ps at any one time, and we float adrift through life, wondering what's missing. Have you ever had a strong sense of people or community--i.e., a great marriage, kids, church, friends, etc.--but hated the place where you lived? Have you ever had a strong sense of people, maybe even loved where you lived, but then had no sense of purpose in life? We can go through all the combinations, but you get the picture. Life is at its best when we experience all three.

However, one obvious question is, if you can't find all three, what do you do? Just live in discontent and anguish? Well, I think there are different ways to approach this:

A sense of people, place, and purpose can exist objectively for us. I.e., we could "stumble" upon it in our journey as I did once in the instance above. But, I had to visit the place on vacation to be reminded of it. I think very few of us experience all three Ps throughout our whole lives.

I do believe they can be pursued. You can search for a people who fit you, a place you adore, you can discover and refine your sense of purpose. Some of us may be missing them simply because we haven't searched hard enough. But the search for all three, too, may be fleeting, always just around the corner, and we're missing the life we were intended to live while on this endless search.

It's possible sometimes to realize that they have in some sense been there all along, and we simply need to shift our perspective to see it. For instance, at the time of this writing, while I'm fairly happy, I'm a little disgruntled about living out my life's purpose and wondering if I'm in the right place. But then I remember that I love my wife and she loves me. Our marriage is the most important sense of "people" or community I could ever have. Wherever we are, she always gives me a strong sense of place. In many ways, living with and loving her is my best sense of purpose. I'm sure those of you with kids, grandchildren, or good friends could say the same thing. So often we pursue the three Ps outside of those who love us, and we're emptier for it.

In light of that, I think the most important place I need to focus my search and perspective concerning the three Ps is on God. I love God and he loves me. No matter where I hang my hat, he is with me. The three Ps aren't fleeting with him. They are sustained first and foremost in my relationship with him. He is my truest sense of place. My dependence on him and his community of followers gives me a sense of people no matter where I am or what I'm doing. Serving him and those in need should always be my most enduring purpose. I can often lose focus of this and try to mind my Ps apart from God. But then, life makes no sense.

And, I know I need to infuse his divine nature into the people, place, and purpose of this world. Ultimately, that's what made the three Ps I experienced above so special for me. Long ago, it was amidst that place of twilight, bean fields, and fireflies where I first had a sense that God was inviting me to be part of his people, where he'd called me to a spiritual purpose that was beyond my nearsighted view of life. It was there where his touch on creation was an overwhelming reminder of his security and significance over my life. There, like no other place on earth, I felt truly at home and had a glimpse of my eternal home.

Where are you? Who are you with? Why are you here? I hope you are on a journey to answering these questions with some sense of satisfaction. If not, start your search for all three. Pursue them. Pray for them. Step back and look for the ways they may have been there all along. Adjust your perspective. Pursue the most organic source of your people, place, and purpose in God, and in Jesus, his Son.

Are you minding your Ps? It's not just about good manners. Life doesn't mean much without them.

Life Is Relationship

Have you ever heard of Viktor Frankl? He was an author and psychotherapist who died about 9 years ago at the age of 92. Among his other accomplishments, he wrote a great book called Man's Search For Meaning. This book begins by showing the way Dr. Frankl would start out his therapy sessions with a new patient. Many of these patients would come to him at the end of their rope, wallowing in despair, and Frankl would start out by asking a simple question: "Tell me, why don't you just commit suicide?" Seems like a pretty counterproductive way to begin therapy, wouldn't you say? But, faced with such a stark question, these people, no matter how far gone in their hopelessness, were forced to come up with a credible answer. Why were they still alive? What sense of meaning made life worth living?

Frankl felt entitled to ask such a question because he himself had discovered the answer. His answer came in the concentration camps of Nazi occupied Europe. A Jewish Austrian, he was thrown into the camps for most of the war and, of course, barely survived (most around him didn't). He was stripped of every layer of humanity left him, and survived on what is most basic to life--at least, what he discovered was most basic.

You see, he was sent to the camps with his beloved wife, but they were immediately separated, and he never saw her again. But, there was one thing that kept him going while in the camps--he could never actually be sure what happened to her. And his faith in that little uncertainty gave him hope. At the depth of his despair, he knew that he had to stay alive and live on. Why? Because, no matter how faint the odds, if it was even possible that there was someone out there who loved him and who he loved in return, he had a reason to live. Just this prospect alone gave his life meaning.

The idea that he learned and passed onto his patients was that Life is Relationship. If life has any merit, any meaning, it's that we have the opportunity to love and be loved. Sometimes we need to be asked a startling question or endure a crisis to realize this, but this understanding exists within all of us. As goes the cliche, 'no one on their deathbed ever wished they spent more time at the office.' But, it's not a guarantee, it's an opportunity, and it becomes something like a gift. For Frankl, it was his wife. For us, it could be a friend, a father, our spouse, our children. The sum of our worth or accomplishment in life is measured, not by how much money we have, how beautiful we are, how famous we are, but by the richness in our personal relationships.

But even in these relationships, we're often faced with the sickly reality that we're all pretty messed up as human beings. We often hurt and are hurt by the ones we're closest to, often as much as we help, and being human, we're also subject to another relational hurt--the pain of sickness and death--the pain of seeing a loved one suffer or even die. So, as much significance as we can get from our human relationships, they too can often fail us, and we're left hungering for something more.

To me, that's why God is the ultimate necessity for life and meaning. But, perhaps you're one who asks the question, 'how can I have a relationship with someone I haven't even seen? How can that give me meaning?' Well, it's a bit like Dr. Frankl. He had faith in even the remote possibility of his wife's existence, and that gave him hope. And, if we really search inside, even when we're feeling the most hopeless or cynical about life, we'll know that there is a God out there who loves us. Think about it. If in the deepest parts of our soul we realize that the only thing that gives life meaning, the only thing that makes life worth living, is our personal relationships, then doesn't it make sense that the source of that life would also be personal, and relational?

In the face of our despair, we can have faith in this "little uncertainty," that there is someone out there who won't ever leave me, who won't let me down, who deeply loves every stitch of my existence. Even when all my human relationships seem to be falling away, I know there is one out there who can be the father, the sister, mother, brother, the spouse or loved one I may have never had. And, on top of that, there's a bonus. As I get to know this loving God, I can also see my human relationships more infused with the integrity and love I always wanted from them.

Do you know when God first noticed something was wrong with the world he'd created? It wasn't Eve and the apple. It was Adam, standing by himself in the garden. In the face of his glorious creation, God saw that something was still incomplete: He said, "It is not good that man should be alone." And, still today, we all feel this in our deepest heart. It is not good for us to be alone. We are not complete as human beings until we are in relationship. With others. With our Creator. And he is out there, loving us right now, and waiting to be loved by us. In my highs and in my lows, that's what keeps me going, and makes life worth living.