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Wisdom-Trek / Creating a Legacy
Welcome to Day 1279 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.
This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom
Purpose That Brings Meaning To Life – Meditation Monday


Wisdom - the final frontier to true knowledge.  Welcome to Wisdom-Trek! Where our mission is to create a legacy of wisdom, to seek out discernment and insights, to boldly grow where few have chosen to grow before. Hello, my friend, I am Guthrie Chamberlain, your captain on our journey to increase Wisdom and Create a Living Legacy.  Thank you for joining us today as we explore wisdom on our 2nd millennium of podcasts. This is Day 1279 of our Trek, and it is time for Meditation Monday.  Taking time to relax, refocus, and reprioritize our lives is crucial in order to create a living legacy.  For you, it may just be time alone for quiet reflection.  You may utilize structured meditation practices. In my life, meditation includes reading and reflecting on God’s Word and in prayer.  It is a time to renew my mind, refocus on what is most important, and making sure that I am nurturing my soul, mind, and body.  As you come along with me on our trek each Meditation Monday, it is my hope and prayer that you, too, will experience a time for reflection and renewing of your mind.

 In our meditation today, let us consider:
Purpose That Brings Meaning To Life
Viktor Frankl who was a prisoner of war in the Nazi concentration camps said: “The lesson one could learn from Auschwitz, and in other concentration camps, in the final analysis, was, those who were oriented toward a meaning — toward a meaning to be fulfilled by them in the future — were most likely to survive.”

The apostle Paul said it this way in Romains 8:18:

Yet what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory he will reveal to us later.

Paul survived many difficult challenges in his life. Some included anguish for being involved in persecuting the early church and supervising the stoning of Stephen (1 Timothy 1:12-14). Other challenges had to do with painful suffering and abuse he endured — hardship through shipwrecks, financial hard times, and physical afflictions (2 Corinthians 11:23-27; Philippians 4:11-13). He would eventually face martyrdom (2 Timothy 4:6-8). No matter the mountains in the way, no matter the severity of his suffering, no matter the difficulty of the challenges, Paul faced them with purpose because he knew his life had meaning in Jesus!

How did he survive these ordeals and keep going?  Where did the old apostle find such resiliency in the face of such stiff opposition?  How did Paul tap into such persevering strength that allowed him to persevere to his end?

Paul looked forward to a bright future with Jesus beyond this life (2 Corinthians 5:1-8; 2 Timothy 4:6-8). He was confident that when his life was over on earth, Jesus was waiting to welcome him into his presence: until then, he knew God had important work for him to do (Philippians 1:19-26). While he waited for the eventual end of his life, Paul lived passionately to fulfill his calling from God. Paul believed that his life had meaning after his earthly life ended. He also trusted that God had a purpose for his life while he was still alive.

Viktor Frankl, in his epic book, Man's Search for Meaning, suggested that we, as human beings, can survive almost any “how” if we have a “why”! We can endure almost anything if our lives have meaning and purpose!In Psalm 139:13-16, David talks about God being present in every dimension and time in our lives. He specifically talks about when our life began and when God first filled our existence with his purpose and meaning:

You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body
and knit me together in my mother’s womb.
Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex!