Don’t go without fulfilling your calling
I finally stopped wanting to die.
The last couple of times I asked God to kill me so I could go be with Kim, I got back the thought, Do you really want to go to heaven without fulfilling your calling? Don’t you want to take that with you? That stopped me. Later I thought that if I meet Kim at Heaven’s gates, she might say something like, “Pete! What are you doing here? You didn’t fulfill your calling! Get back there and do it!” So I’ve determined to live and go to my next chapter.
There you go: Faithfulness motivated by avoiding embarrassment.
I visited Belize again (formerly British Honduras, on the eastern side of the Yucatan Peninsula). From June I will begin going there to pastor a small church, train pastors, and oversee a preschool in a hardscrabble town on the Caribbean coast called Dangriga.
I haven’t sorted it all out yet, and rather than diving in headfirst as I was going to do, I’ve been universally counseled to approach it step by step. I’ve discovered that doing something like this at age 67 is very different from diving into things like this at age 27.
Before Kim passed, I was offered the ministry job and accepted it. Kim went gladly knowing that this is what I would do.
You may be young, old, or somewhere in between. You may be a normal person, or you may be a little bit crazy. However you live the life God gave you, I hope you live it to the fullest in whatever way he intends you to live.
Here’s something I often tell my students:
· The meaning of life is to find your purpose.
· The purpose of life is to give it away.
What might your meaning and purpose—or your calling—be?
Are you pursuing it?
Peter,
You and I have such similar experiences…I resonate so deeply with your journey.
Sometimes when I read your comments, I feel as though you were inside my own head.
Like you, many times I’ve wished for absolutely nothing but to be with my wife. Yet, like you, in the next moment, I can hear her urging me to complete my purpose here on earth!
In the meantime, He has a task for each of us. When that day finally comes that we’re reunited with our wives, we can do so with confidence that we remained faithful to His calling till the end…(and didn’t disappoint them! Ha!)
I feel confident you’ll continue to follow the Lord’s leading.
Just know you have a brother who understands.