Like a never ending desert mirage we search for meaning in our lives. There are many of roads to choose, ideas to employ and viewpoints to use, shape, and take on as our own. With each stage of our lives we face confusion because of the many directions we can choose to take in life. Circumstances, people, institutions, concepts all play a part in molding and shaping our journey. Our environment shapes us, molds us and helps us to define our character; more than we can imagine. So our purpose; our meaning is an evolving work in progress, constantly changing and morphing into our reality.
We choose paths in our lives influenced by powerful institutions and structures. What is our path? It is the growth intellectually that we seek in our lives? It is the choices we make to remain stagnant or to grow? Influences can be quite powerful, that they can totally consume our thinking and lead us down destructive paths. Finally circumstances sometime force us to take entirely different paths.
What we seek in our lives says volumes about our character and our values. We are primarily concerned with "me" and that fixation can drive our outlook and or desires. Life changing events can roll over just about anything, certainly our plans, our hopes and our future.
It takes a life changing event to ground us, open us to new possibilities that we did not or have not considered. For me it was a diagnoses of advance prostate cancer, at the age of forty-eight I was devastated to learn that I had this dreaded disease. The statistics say 1 in 5 men will get prostate cancer and that if a man lives long enough he will eventually get prostate cancer; it is a by-product of aging. It is a common cancer among elderly men. It is uncommon for a forty-eight year old man to get prostate cancer. Everything that you are in a physical sense is challenged. Because your primary focus now is to merely survive. I'm fifty-three now and I am a cancer survivor.
I' m not sure if you can grasp that, not knowing if you will be around five years from now can have a devastating effect on your plans and the way you view your future. When you a battling cancer you learn not to focus so much on tomorrow, but everyday you live to see is a victory and you live in the here and now. I saw the things that I wanted to accomplish fade away, they became meaningless. My focus now is on surviving my cancer. I tackled this mission with a zeal and passion that I've thrown into nearly everything I've done. This time the stakes are high. It is a battle for life or death.
It's been five years now and I am still winning the battle. I'm a survivor as we cancer survivors call ourselves. A funny thing happened to me along the way in this five year battle. I learned more than I ever knew about life. I learned about God's green earth and the many wonders that God has given us. I learned that God answers prayers because I'm still here by His grace. I learned that God's will is for us to know His word. There is comfort is spending time with Him each and every morning that I am blessed to see. I took up bike riding with my wife and got in touch with nature. I journal to the Lord each morning and meditate to Him each night. I have read the bible nearly every chapter and in the process learned more that I ever knew about the word of God and myself. I learned I needed to make changes in my life. It you ask me what is the meaning of life now? I would say that it loving God and His Son Jesus Christ. It is reaching out to others to bring them to the Body of Christ. My goal is now to be the most devoted follower of the Lord that I can be. My purpose is firm, by desire is steadfast
