Well, I’ve done it. I’ve finally graduated. After 4 years of hard work, I have earned my degree with high honors (even if the diploma wasn’t in the folder…but that’s another rant), received much more than my share of awards, and I’m finally finished. My last assignment has been handed in, the ceremony is over, and I now can put three initials after my name, should I so choose (that just filled me with a warm fuzzy feeling when I saw it in the program for graduation!).

I will admit, though, that now I feel rather lost. Maybe it’s just the let-down of the end of the celebration kicking in, but I think it’s more than that. I’ve suddenly realized that the little-picture goal that I’ve been running towards for the past 4 years has finally been achieved. It is but a small piece of the purpose of my life, but it is a goal accomplished, none-the-less. So now I have to ask myself: what’s next? What am I aiming for now? And I have to answer that I’m not quite sure yet. I don’t know if I like that feeling. I’d like to feel that my life is going somewhere. Of course, learning and growing in knowledge is always a goal, but now it’s not really measureable. Before it was, get this paper done, get through this class, this semester, this year, finish college. Now it’s some abstract sort of thing. I mean, I can say, “My goal is to read 1 new scholarly book each month,” or “My goal is to translate one Hebrew passage per week,” and that’s all fine and good, but that’s a lifelong thing that I never plan to stop - learning, that is.

Perhaps my greatest fear is falling into the humdrum of going to work, coming home, doing whatever, going to work, coming home, doing whatever, going to work…etc. That’s okay for the short-term, but when I look out upon however many years of it, it fades into this endless, monotonous grey that’s very depressing. Granted, my ministry at church is the one bright spot in that existance, but that is what I’d rather be doing full-time with my life, and so that seems like some faint sparkle on the horizon that might be in my future, rather than life, if you know what I mean. Yet on the other hand, my ministry is my life - I just don’t and can’t devote a full-time work load to it right now, because, well, I have to pay off school loans.

I mean, I guess I could say that my goal is to pay off my school loans. And that is a goal, certainly…but it’s not very…fulfilling. And I could say it’s to get my Master’s, but then that just brings up another struggle: what on earth am I going to do with my Master’s once I get it? And my Ph.D? I know without a doubt I want both, but what I have decided I need it for I’m not sure anyone else thinks I need it for, and I certainly won’t get paid for what I think I need it for.

Perhaps my feeling is that there is tension right now - tension between where I want to be and where I am. Being in college somehow was helping me towards my goal of where I want to be - now I feel like I’ve suddently stalled. Yet, at the same time, being in youth ministry is certainly helping me towards that goal. But then again, I can’t be in youth ministry like I would like to be, because I’m in a transition stage right now - work to pay off school loans. But on the other hand, where do I want to be anyhow? Serving God? Helping teach teenagers to love and serve God? Am I not doing that? What a confusing swirl of emotions and thoughts.

And here I always thought that I had the whole purpose of life thing down. I guess it’s nice to say, in the words of the Westminster Catechism, “to glorify God and enjoy him forever,” or to love and serve God, or “belong, grow, and serve” as we say at my church, but…I take those things for granted I guess. That is obvious to me. My question is, what is my purpose? Why am I here? Does that sound selfish, as if it’s all about me? I don’t mean it that way. I know my desires, and how my heart aches for the pitiful state of the Western Church, and how frusterating it is to see such discontinuity between it and the ideal, and how badly I want to be a part of the ideal, when it doesn’t exist. And how much I want to help others learn to think, and love and serve God. And to teach people to realize that maybe it’s not such a radical concept to learn the languages of your own holy text. If the Jews can do it, why can’t we? Why are we so complacent? Why have we dumbed down our faith so much? Why are we not passionate? Why are we not a community? Why are we such hypocrites? Why are we so fake, so plastic, so cookie cutter? Why, why, why? Where is the church described in the New Testament? Where are God’s people? Where is love, where is hope, where is faith? All I want is to do my own part, however small, in helping that church come back.

The agony is almost unbearable at times. The tension of “living in the gap”, as a former professor of mine would say, between Christ’s first and second coming is hard. Maybe my whole problem is that college is a bit sheltered. I have learned, and grown, and have had awakened within me a great desire to continue learning and growing as much as this life allows, and a great desire to see the rest of the church have the same desire. I know the text, and I know how it’s supposed to be, and though I have always known it, and always agonized over it, suddenly the concept of facing it is like a hard slap in the face. Here I am, armed with my BRE, ready to…what? Go to work? Of course…but what now? What next? What do I do now with what really matters? With where my desires really lie? I love my new job, but it is only a means to an end - money to live off of. Getting my BRE, though I didn’t know it when I first came to college, was just the first step in the long process of the lifelong process of loving and serving God. So again I ask: now what? Continue to serve faithfully, of course…continue to keep moving foward, doing my part.

I feel simliar to how I felt in 10th grade, only this time, it isn’t the agony of wanting to drop into a hole and die, but rather the agony of wanting to do something but feeling like I’m moving through molassas. Somehow the two feelings are similar, though I don’t know quite how that works out. I’m sure I’ll work it out. I am, after all, at the end of a roller coaster ride that has been an unprecidented period of growth for me. College has been my life. Suddenly, something else has to be my life. What will that be? Don’t say God - that’s so trite. Of course God is my life, but let’s be practical - what does that mean? For the last four years, God being my life has meant studying hard in school, not for getting three initials, however nice that is, but for the purpose of serving him.

I have come to no conclusion, but talking (or writing, if you want to be technical) it through has given me some things to think about. And at least I know that I have one very important short-term yet lifelong goal: living every day in service and obedience to Christ.