Books

40 Days and mixed-up motivations

A life devoted to things is a dead life, a stump;
a God-shaped life is a flourishing tree.

Proverbs 11:28 (The Message)

We’re doing the 40 Days of Purpose (going through The Purpose Driven Life in groups and in the sermons) again at The Experience.

Even though I’ve been through it twice already, I’m looking forward to it. It’s always a different experience because 1) I’m an ever-changing person and 2) I’ll be going through it with a different group of people.

The timing is also good. Lately I’ve been struggling with the question of how to put my whole life together. On the one hand, I have my work life, which consumes most of my waking hours. I like my work pretty well, but my constant goal in that part of my life is to make enough money (both by saving it and by creating passive income) to not have to work. I have that goal in common with many folks, I think, and it’s generally considered reasonable.

But on the other hand, I go to sites like Kiva and hear how such a small amount of money is changing lives so drastically, and then I want to throw myself into doing “things that really matter.” I have a hard time reconciling the pursuit of money for my own comfort with the state of the world and the Great Commission.

The optimistically pragmatic among you are probably thinking, “Well, easy. Take the money you make with your business and put it into Kiva or other things that matter.” If I was a less-disjointed person, I’d do just that. But I want my money for that new touring bike I’ve been eying, or to afford more cycling vacations, or just to have Daniel around more. There might be some “mattering” side effects (like doing more work on the church website or contributing to open source software if we didn’t have “jobs”), but really, I’m in it for my own personal comfort.

Something has to shift. I think God’s going to have to help me shuffle my priorities or I’m going to go nuts. (Only I hope He’ll wait until after I get the touring bike… and sadly, I’m only half-joking about that…) Maybe He’ll show me how to use my resources better, and give me the desire. I’m really hoping I don’t have to learn by losing everything, though if I continue to be selfish, that may be what it comes to! Definitely prefer to avoid that.

So maybe this 40 Days of Purpose will give me both tools and inspiration to get my priorities straightened out. That’s what I’m hoping for.

As far as blogging it, I’ve learned my lesson… I’m not going to promise to blog every day, but I will blog whenever it makes sense and I have time.

© 2007 Something Epic.