If your life is happy or satisfying so that simply living feels good and worthwhile or if your life is integral to something that you believe is an important endeavor, then life has meaning for you. I have lacked the first for twenty years and the second for ten years. It makes me feel lost, directionless, without purpose. I cannot make sense of my life. Why am I here? The only goal-oriented living I do is my personal growth. But for various reasons that doesn’t seem a focus I can organize my whole life around… for one thing, it is self-absorbed. I feel like a screw that is always sharpening its threads and point but never being used to screw things together.
Many would suggest that our purpose is to be connected to God, but unless I became a monk (and I’m sure Kimberly would object with good reason), I’m not sure how to organize my life around that either–that objective describes the person with whom I do life more than the activities that fill up my life.
The old Calvinist theology of “calling” suggests not only that one may have a purpose, but that it is a purpose for which God planned, designed, and equipped us, not one randomly chosen. After all a screw might decide to act as a light bulb, but that would have obvious drawbacks.
In that regard, I do feel particularly equipped and effective at preaching/teaching, but I have no avenues for exercising that gift… and have almost no emotional energy for seeking them out. So, it seems I must become emotionally energized (and I’m at a loss to know how) or some opportunity must be dropped in my lap. Neither of those has happened in ten years. So I sit waiting, filing my little threads. Perhaps the right moment will come, or perhaps I will die of old age waiting. But the question remains, “What is the point of it all?” as I daily suffer the sharp pain of feeling useless to a vast, needy world.
Janathan Grace Reflections 
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