One of the hymms of my childhood is 'All my hope on God is founded'. Yet it is my experience that it is very easy to allow other things to become what makes getting up in the morning worthwhile. Then something happens – and you find out what is really important to you, and it's not necessarily what it should be!

I've had a bad week; some disappointing exam results, my mobile phone is knackered, and the person who is the nearest to being my YF was around briefly, but is now back at his job in another city. All very much 1st world problems compared with the horrors much of the world is experiencing at the moment, but the combination HURT. It forced me to face the question: 'what is my life for?', and whilst the 'right' answer: 'To serve God' did surface, what that actually means wasn't so obvious.

From the BL perspective, it can be even more problematic. Unless we are blessed with employment that gives our life meaningful purpose, we can struggle to find any value in living. This is one of the reasons why our YFs can become so important to us; they do provide such a reason. Those of us who are not part of conventional families tend to struggle to fit into churches whose focus is on such people. We want to be significant, make a difference, be part of 'life'. Yet we can instead feel we miss out, and become valueless in a society that demands achievement.

The call of Jesus is to find our meaning in Him. In the long run, from the perspective of eternity, when we will be at home with Him, much of these things will be seen to be totally irrelevant. So our challenge is to live in THAT perspective, and not get distracted from what is important by what is, ultimately, of no significance. Is this easy? Of course not. But it is what we should be striving for. And as Christians we have hope for the future – but life now is tough; those who have it easy now, because they have the advantage of being 'normal' and so live out the conventional dream, are in for a rude awakening if they don't know Jesus: it's them we should be sorry for when we are tempted to sulk at God! (cf Ps 37)




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