025: Purposeful-ness

March 12, 2010
1 Corinthians 9:24-27, Romans 3

My sister and her fiancé are visiting my parents and siblings this weekend. One of my younger sisters is home from Florida on Spring break. Tonight I got home as everyone was sitting down to dinner. After dinner, my sister and Andrew wanted to play a game with my youngest two siblings, since they had promised to get some game time in.

One of the longstanding games in our family is a card game we call “Up and Down.” In involves an agonizingly slow process of taking turns and trying to avoid getting stuck with the cards being played each round. It’s not my favorite game. Once upon a time, for my 12th birthday, I talked my parents into taking our family to Seattle on the train and staying in a hotel over night so we could go to the Seattle Science Center. We played “Up and Down” the whole 3 hour train ride to Seattle, that evening in the hotel room, and all the way back. I’ve never liked the game since.

I prefer fast games. I’m a big fan of Nertz and Crazy Scrabble and Catch Phrase and Taboo and Speed. I like games where I’m directly involved, or have to wait just a minimum amount of time before I can engage again. My Dad is the opposite. He likes Risk and Axis and Allies and games that require strategy and thinking.

I told my Dad tonight, “You think I’m crazy for wanting to run a marathon or going out for a long, multi-hour run? I think you’re crazy for thinking playing the same boring game for 2+ hours is entertaining and fun.”

I was thinking about how our game personalities are different, and how maybe that’s an indication of what our life stories will be like. My Dad bought a farm almost 30 years ago, married my Mom, and has been working on strategizing and planning and thinking through their business ever since. I transferred four times between three different schools to get my bachelor’s degree.

Will I be a person that is always jumping from one amusing, entertaining, rapid situation to another? Do I have it in me to take the one thing I seem to have some longevity in (running) and transfer that dedication and patience toward life? Toward a career? A family? A church? My parents are stable sorts of people. I wonder if I am? I tend to think I’m not.

My uncle and I had a conversation today, and he said something that made a lot of sense. He said, “You can either have freedom, or you can have stuff. You can’t have both.” If I want to aim for a nice house, a sunroom with all kinds of organic veggies and fruits, and developing a sustainable lifestyle, I’m not going to have freedom to run off to Southern California for a wedding over a weekend.

Paul talks about being purposeful in our lives. God is faithful regardless of what we do, but He invites us into a relationship with Him. We should take that seriously and purposefully. If it was impossible to do that – even for someone with my personality – then why would it be important?