Purpose

This generation more than any other seems to want purpose for their life; to work at something that they love doing. And I have also heard many discuss a desire for justice and wanting to help others. We are looking to create something perhaps. Common themes of looking for love, for justice, for creating, and for connection.

When I take a step back I notice something. These things we are striving for, where do they come from? Meaning that as humans we are different than animals. What drives us for what we decipher as meaning, purpose, and morality? Good vs. evil. What spurs people to care that others are homeless or being sex trafficked? Could it be that there is a design to us? Could it be that we mean more than earth, dust, and bones?

Where did this love or quest for deeper meaning originate from? Now there is nothing I hate more than preachy or judgmental memoirs. Yet when I come to these questions (and I have at different times of life), I keep coming back to “God is love.” Allow me to connect that.

You see if you aren’t familiar, I John (yep the Bible) makes that statement. Not that God has love, or lives love, or even likes love; but that he IS love. As we in our generation search, I wonder about that. These things we search for, they seem to be a part of us. Creating, loving, wanting purpose. It’s funny but I think about God creating and it connects me to the process more. Creating and connection are the first things God speaks of concerning himself and us. Creating with love.

It’s strange, but as I create it’s like I connect with God. Then I think; did he make us with as much excitement, joy, and even anticipation as I feel when I create? And the connection with others that simply loving them brings. Is that the connection that God longs for with us as well? Just loving and being loved well. Doing more through love and connecting, that is what we search for. But it makes me wonder if we, our generation, are searching for something much deeper than even that.

Written By

New Yorker, photographer, blogger, and life time dreamer.