Congratulations may be in order

There is a passage in Scripture that has always fascinated me, but I didn't want to look at it too closely, lest it require more of me.

"I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come," Jesus tells his disciples in John 16:12 and 13. It sounds so ominous. How much more is there to learn? Personally, I think we'll continue learning the fullness of God's truth throughout eternity. In fact, I have to wonder if eternity will be long enough.

It's hard to live "other-than" or outside of this world, we spend so much time in it. We don't just skate the surface of it, like we channel-surf television, we dive in head-first as soon as our feet hit the floor.

Proper etiquette requires that we are clean and dressed appropriate to the day and the tasks before us.

Thus prepared, we pull the door closed on our safe, four walls, and enter the fray.

In the course of my life, I have had more than 30 jobs. I know, because I counted them up a few years back. Even I was impressed. My first job was to be someone's daughter and the first daughter's little sister. I received my promotion to big, or at least older, sister in less than two years. Somedays, I was the best sister ever. On others days, well, just ask my brothers and sisters. We learned a lot from one another through those years.

I'm not sure when I became a student, but I know it is a title I still hold today.

Along the way, came the other "jobs." That of wife. Then mother. Then, the job of money. Children had to be fed, mortgage payments met, everything costing so much more every time you turned around. I scarcely remember the '80s or much of the '90s, they went by in a blur of home, work, and children. Every day was consumed with activity, and ended with a thud as everyone fell into soft beds. What a distinct and unique blessing is now ours to have left the job of money behind.

Agur's prayer in Proverbs 30:9, "Two things I ask of you, O Lord; do not refuse me before I die: Keep falsehood and lies far from me; give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread. Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you and say, 'Who is the Lord?' Or I may become poor and steal, and so dishonor the name of my God" has been answered for us.

It is God's own mercy that he moved us all the way out to Southwest Nebraska to answer both aspects of Agur's prayer.

I received another promotion today. I wasn't expecting one. When people ask me where I work, the default answer for nearly 15 years has been "the McCook Daily Gazette." I guess I thought my kingdom job was a part time. I couldn't have been more wrong.

Throughout my life, I have seen people who had found their purpose and fulfilled it.

Others seem to be entirely comfortable living a life with no sense of purpose. Then there were those, who, like me, always knew that there was purpose but didn't know their part in it. This unexpected promotion has finally revealed my purpose.

My purpose is my life. The roads I've traveled, the side trips to investigate this or that, the people I've encountered along the way that held me up when I would have surely fallen, and oh, those many jobs -- all part of my life, all part of my purpose.

I use the tagline "I don't have all the answers, but I know the One who does... " because it is ever true. And he knows what is yet to come, and has provided purpose for today.

"'If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world.'" John 15:18, 19 (NIV)

I don't have all the answers, but I know the One who does. Let's walk together for awhile and discover Him together.

Dawn