Silent Times: Chapter 11 - Finding One's Mission
One of the most inspiring of truths, is that God has a distinct plan for each one of us in sending us into this world. Not only does He create us all to be useful, to take some part in the world's affairs, to honor and glorify him in some way--but he designs each person for some definite place and some specific work. He does not send us into life merely to fill any niche into which we may chance to be lifted by the vicissitudes of life; or to do whatever bits of work may drift to our hands in the vast and complicated mesh of human affairs. God has a great plan, embracing "all his creatures and all their actions;" and in this plan every person has an allotted place, and an assigned part. God has, therefore, a distinct plan and purpose for each one of us; and a true life is one in which we simply fulfill the divine intention concerning us, occupy the place for which we were made, and do the particular work set down for us in God's plan.
A distinguished preacher has said, "There is a definite and proper end and outcome for every man's existence, an end which to the heart of God, is the good intended for him, or for which he was intended; that which he is privileged to become, called to become, ought to become; that which God will assist him to become, and which he cannot miss except by his own fault. Every human soul has a complete and perfect plan cherished for it in the heart of God--a divine biography marked out, which it enters into life to live."
Surely this is a great thought, and one that gives to life--to each and every life, the smallest life, the obscurest life--a sacred dignity and importance. Nothing can be trivial or common, which the great God thinks about, plans, and creates. The lowliest place in this world, to the person whom God made to occupy that place, is a position of rank and honor, as glorious as an angel's seat, because it is one which God formed an immortal being in his own image, and with immeasurable possibilities, to fill. George MacDonald says, "I would rather be what God chose to make me--than the most glorious creature that I could think of; for to have been thought about, born in God's thought, and then made by God--is the dearest, grandest, and most precious thing in all thinking."
The question of small or great has no place here. To have been thought about at all, and then fashioned by God's hands to fill any place--is glory enough for the grandest and most aspiring life. And the highest place to which anyone can attain in life--is that for which he was designed and made. The greatest thing anyone can do in this world--is what God made him to do, whether it be to rule a kingdom, to write a nation's songs, or to keep a little home clean and tidy. The true goal of life is not to be great, or to do great things--but to be just what God meant us to be. If we fail in this, though we win a place far more conspicuous, our life is a failure.
An intensely practical question, therefore, is, How may we find our place--the place for which God made us? How can we learn what he wants us to do in his great world, with its infinity of spheres and occupations? How may we be sure that we are fulfilling our part in God's great plan? In the olden days, men were sometimes guided to their missions by special revelation. In the absence of such supernatural direction, how may we know what God made us for?
