A few days ago I was listening to the radio as I drove, and overheard a lady speaking who, as a teenager, wanted to commit suicide. She thought life was so terrible and hopeless that there was no point to living.

She said that she was in the midst of her suicide attempt when she heard an audible voice say, ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ She looked around and saw there was no one there. She was about to proceed and then heard the voice again, “You have not yet fulfilled the purpose you were created for.”

What astonished her wasn’t so much that the words were audible, it was that there might be a purpose to her life after all. She said that from that point on, her depression was gone. Not because she believed that God spoke to her, though she did believe that too, but because she had been told that her life mattered, and that there was some mysterious purpose to it.

How many of us yearn to be more than some random mass of accidental space particles with no deeper purpose than to exist as a short puff of life on earth? Sometimes we’re told to get rid of those antiquated notions that there may be a metaphysical reason for living. We’re told that this ‘here and now’ is probably all there is. And we’re told to forget about that notion that there is a Creator who both cares about us and has a plan for us! How often those hopes have been smashed by those who have no supernatural beliefs of their own? Why must those without faith force their beliefs upon those who hope in something more: as if someone else’s belief or faith is a direct threat to their own existence?

In my own life, when I began my journey in faith, it was with wonderment that I began to learn, through spiritual reading, that there was meaning and purpose to my existence. Not only did God know who I was, but he truly cared about me. I’d never had a serious problem in actually believing in God, my problem had been in believing He actually cared.

Which brings us back to the title of this post: Why Were You Born? What is Your Purpose?  While I have many guesses I can make about the purpose of my existence, I think that many things will remain a mystery until the day we die. However, it is enough for me to know that I was made for some purpose.