Scroll Article

 Here is the article from the January 1 issue of my church's newsletter.

For this issue of the PCC Scroll, we are coming from the theme “Living with Purpose, Avoiding Apathy.”

When I sat down to begin writing my article, my mind wandered back to my college days. During that time, I was on the board of three student groups and on the student senate. I was going to school fulltime, and I was working part time. I was constantly going and going. I would move blindly from school to work to one event to another. I was doing a lot, but I sometimes felt disconnected from all of the activities.

For many years after college, it was the same way. I was doing a lot, and I was involved in so many things. I can remember one period of my life where I felt like I was just performing a bunch of roles I had been cast into. I had a role at church, and I had a role at my job. And (good, bad, or otherwise), I have always been a model student who performs what is expected of me. But truthfully, I never felt like I was accomplishing anything.

At some point in time, I reached a breaking point. I realized that I was doing a lot of things, but I wasn’t doing any one thing well. I realized that I could do a whole lot of “tasks” and still feel apathetic. I had always considered apathy to be lack of activity. But, for me, apathy was not about lack of activity. Apathy was doing a whole lot of things I had no passion or interest in doing.

It was at that point that I started looking at what I should really be doing with my time, life, resources, and gifts. What was I created and called to do? What areas was I passionate about and naturally gifted in? I was trying to identify my purpose.

Looking at my life, writing was one area that stood out. As I began writing more for the Scroll and for my job, another area emerged. That area was editing. If I had continued to be busy on the wrong things, I am not sure when or if this area would have been revealed to me. But it has become part of my purpose.

The area of “helps” is another area that stood out. I have always scored highly in this area, and most Sundays (pray for me please) I can serve freely and unhesitatingly in this function as an usher.

I took the time to look up the words apathy and purpose before I began writing. One of the definitions of the word purpose really stood out to me. It’s in the Bing Dictionary, and it simply says, “reason for existence: the reason for which something exists or for which it has been done or made.”

And that is really what it comes down to. We can fill our lives and time with a lot of activities, but this can be harmful because it distracts us from what our true purpose is and that is extremely unfortunate.