Calvary Episcopal Church
Memphis, Tennessee
THE CHRONICLE
April 13, 2003
Vol. 48, No. 15

What Are You Looking For?
My longtime good friend, Paul Rogers, is fond of saying, "If anyone thinks that money can't buy happiness then they're shopping in the wrong store!"

I've come to see the whole world as a vast marketplace in which each one of us has to choose how to "spend" the resources of your life-your time, talents, and energy. You can decide that the accumulation of things is your goal. You can determine that learning is what you want to pursue. Fame and achievement can occupy you for a lifetime. Building a network of relationships through family and friends can be a life vocation. Whatever it is that you consider to be the most worthwhile and pleasing accomplishment will absorb most of your time, energy, and talents.

So…what are you looking for?

If you don't know, or haven't bothered to choose, or if it keeps changing all the time, it's very unlikely that you will be able to focus your resources to reach any goal. Each of us needs to identify the thing that pulls us toward it with an attraction that gives our life a sense of meaning and purpose. Knowing what you care about and striving intentionally to move in that direction is a key source of motivation and satisfaction.

But even if you do have sufficient focus and you are able to invest your search efforts and resources effectively, there's never a guarantee that you'll ever find what you're looking for. There are so many chances and changes that come along to pose obstacles that can defeat even the best laid plans. Our human-scale vision is very limited. We put off the "big questions." We set objectives for ourselves that are too easily achievable and that once accomplished, manage to leave us unsatisfied.

Could it be that we're shopping in the wrong store?

I know this about life goals: the aims that last a whole life long and that continue to inspire us year after year have their source not in our own human aspirations, but in responding to the built-in motivations that resonate from God's Spirit within us. People who listen to that inner voice, discern its message and music, and then proceed to work their life planning in harmony with it know true satisfaction and meaning. It's a matter of "communion"-flowing together.

In Gethsemane's Garden, praying in those last desperate hours before the crucifixion, Jesus said, "Not my will, but Yours be done." I read that verse to mean something like, "My will and Yours have become completely one, and so we move forward together."

Easter is all about that kind of unity, harmony, communion. The new life that God
offers to each of us is that our search for meaning finds its true fulfillment in embracing God's purposes for us. Rightly understood, the two are exactly the same.
Bob Hansel

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