Always Growing: It's a Meaningful Life

 In my book, Casting Stones (2017), you’ll find this quote:

Without God, everything is meaningless.

With God, every single thing has purpose and meaning.

Casting Stones is a study of Ecclesiastes 3. Ecclesiastes 3 is about birth and death, laughter and mourning, the things we plant and the things that need to be plucked. It is about the inordinate amount of changes we face in this life and this world, and the exhaustion that comes with our constant experience of these changes in brokenness. It would be one thing to confront change time and again, but our changes often include death, disease, hurt, or at least heaviness. But Ecclesiastes 3 is also about joy and new births and celebration.

I think Ecclesiastes 3 is a result of someone looking life’s last developmental stage in the face and finding meaning in all of these rather than despair in the overwhelm. That meaning does not come easily, and the Holy Spirit reveals that in Scripture without prettying it up for us. The entire book of Ecclesiastes can be a real downer as the reader walks with Solomon, the likely author, as he wrestles with integrity vs. despair.

Life itself is about finding meaning, no matter our developmental stage. 

We search for meaning when we seek safety and attachment as infants (trust vs. distrust).

We search for meaning when we explore and test the waters of curiosity and creativity as toddlers (autonomy vs. shame).

We search for meaning when we test out leadership and having a voice in our nursery school years (initiative vs. guilt).

We search for meaning when we put on and take off a million masks to get to the real version of ourselves in identity formation (identity vs. role confusion).

We search for meaning when we struggle to figure out relationship and all the challenges and joys it brings into our lives (intimacy vs. isolation).

Yet, there is a time in life when meaning forces its hand, when it demands to be noticed a little more forthrightly, when it follows us around with a bullhorn until we tell it, “Enough already!” and give it some attention and some energy.  This time is integrity vs. despair. Integrity is found when we can look back at our lives and over all we feel that we have spent our lives well, that we lived our lives true to ourselves and true to who God made us to be. We can see something(s) we have accomplished, but more than that we can see relationships that mattered and a journey of authenticity.

Integrity is imperfect because life is imperfect. None of us will look at our life with zero regrets.

Integrity, instead, is a time where we make peace with those regrets, where we confess those regrets and align them with Christ, with grace, and with kindness toward ourselves. Integrity does well when we are honest and gentle with ourselves. It is something that happens naturally as we get older, but it is also a skill that we learn when we look in the mirror or sit with our Bibles, or our friends in both honesty and kindness.

Focus your lens for a moment to gain a sense of integrity in your life. Be descriptive with the following statements, be honest, be kind, believe that God is growing you and growing meaning in your life.

The life I want looks, sounds, and feels like:

The life I have looks, sounds, and feels like:

The adjustments that are possible include:

I need the God of the impossible to do His work in these areas:

Now look for moments in your life where God has brought meaning. Look for the meaning in the small moments, big moments, happy moments, and the hard moments too.

            My small moments of meaning:

            My big moments of meaning:

            My happy moments of meaning:

            My hard moments of meaning:

Where do you see your moments overlap? Where do you see growth and purpose in these moments?

The Spirit is steadily at work even when we don’t see God clearly. The Spirit is present even when we don’t recognize God's touch on our faces.

The meaning is there, even when we miss it.

The thief on the cross asking for Jesus’s touch in his last moments had just as much meaning as Joseph or Paul or any of the prophets who knew God their whole lives. Christ is the center of our meaning. We have integrity as much loved, forgiven, redeemed, restored children of God. There is our meaning, all we’ll want, all we will need. There is our identity and true intimacy as well. Christ feeds our curiosity and gives space for our voice and rest for when our bones are tired.

Christ is the center of all our meaning and brings meaning into our centers.

Breathe in God’s growth and grace and hope into your core and breathe out regret, heartache and the brokenness of life. He holds all of it in loving, capable hands.

We are always growing, every day. Centering our growth on Him makes it easier to see, easier to sense, and a little easier to share. May your growth feel fresh and real for you today and may you see it every day after this one through the lens by which God sees you: through Jesus, the Author of meaning in every one of our days.

Tell me in the comments about a moment of life where you can see the meaning in the messiness and the celebration, or the meaning in the mundane?

We are always growing…in meaning and grace.

Find more info on Casting Stones under the Books and Studies tab.