If your first concern is to look after yourself, you'll never find yourself. But if you forget about yourself and look to me, you'll find both yourself and me. "We are intimately linked in this harvest work. Anyone who accepts what you do, accepts me, the One who sent you. Anyone who accepts what I do accepts what I do accepts my father, who sent me. Accepting a messenger of God is as good as being God's messenger. Accepting someone's help is as good as giving someone help. This is a large work I've called you into, but don't be overwhelmed by it. Its best to start small. Give a cool cup of water to someone who is thirsty, for instance. The smallest act of giving or receiving makes you a true apprentice. You won't lose out on a thing."
--Matthew 10:30-42 (The Message)
"Don't aim at success--the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you're going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one's dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the byproduct of one's surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you live to see that in the long run--in the long run, I say!--success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think of it."
--Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning
I've been so consumed with "finding myself" that I sometimes forget to "lose myself" in God. A few weeks ago I felt God speaking to me and telling me that I needed to pursue a master's in school counseling and help young adults with the challenges of adolescents. As is common with me, I became very eager and excited, but as the weeks went on, I became confused. I questioned whether or not this was coming from God or if this was just me trying to do something that wouldn't require jumping through a bunch of hurdles. I'm still trying to turn my ear to God and really hear him. He's placed this desire in my heart for a reason. Yesterday, the pastor read the above scripture and I immediately began linking it to the quote in Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning that had opened my eyes to the flaws in my ambition to pursue an MBA and the almighty dollar. Read both passages carefully and you will see how alike they truly are. I'm trying to get better at recognizing God at work in my life, and I certainly believe that this is testament that he is.
Lord, please hear my prayer. I'm listening, I'm here, send me and I will go. Please send me signs that I've chosen to follow your will for my life. Send me down a path that allows me to do your work Lord. Lord, I lift up the admissions team at St. John's to you, I lift myself up, I lift those that I've been interviewing up, please speak louder to me. Thank you for working in my life.
In Jesus name,
Amen
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