Most of the time, everyone is so busy getting it done that no one has time to think about why they’re doing it. It’s just that in those moments when there’s enough space and quiet to think about it, it can get depressing if there is no answer.
Solomon noticed that
“The sun also rises, and the sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it arose. The wind goes toward the south, and turns around to the north; the wind whirls about continually, and comes again on its circuit. All the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is not full; to the place from which the rivers come, there they return again.” (Ecclesiastes 1:5-7)
He found it depressing that the sun, wind, and rivers just seemed to be repeating the same cycle again and again.
If anyone had a reason to live, it was Jesus. In an encounter with a woman who was looked down on in her home country of Samaria, He opened a conversation about water. The encounter took place at a well. The woman had a bucket and Jesus did not. He asked the woman to give Him a drink of water. As their conversation continued, Jesus told her, “Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life” (John 4:13-14). The woman believed in Jesus that day and gained a well within her spirit.
But Jesus also gained something. When His disciples came and wanted Him to eat, He told them, “I have food to eat of which you do not know.” Then He said, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to finish His work” (John 4:32,34). When Jesus gave real life to the Samaritan woman, He was fulfilling what God sent Him to do.
Jesus knew why He had come and what He was here to do. His life had maximum meaning.
It’s true for us, too, that life without a mission is life without meaning. But a mission that goes no deeper than politics or a cause that we choose won’t satisfy. The mission has got to come by knowing Jesus and the Father who sent Him.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.