We all have talents. Find your passion and do it on purpose. Miss America 2020 Camille Schrier, a pharmaceutical doctoral candidate who conducted a scientific demonstration as her talent.
Not long ago, we watched “Saint Ralph” on Netflix. Certainly, it’s not the best movie I have ever watched, but it was entertaining and prompted reaffirmation that we all need purpose in moving forward.
Ralph, a 12-year-old student at a Canadian Catholic School, seeks a miracle to heal his mom of cancer. The medical staff says she needs a miracle.
As a last resort for his constant misbehavior, the headmaster assigns Ralph, who has learned that one doesn’t have to be a saint to perform a miracle, to practice with the track team. After days of grueling workouts, the track coach at his school says, “Someone from this team winning the Boston Marathon would be a miracle greater than the loaves and fishes.”
Ralph now has his purpose. If he works hard enough to win the famed race, his mother will be healed. Of course, it doesn’t work out according to his plan, but working with a purpose changed Ralph.
Often times, we discover we have more than one purpose. My mother-in-law worked several jobs that she loved and excelled at.
First, she was a proof reader for The Caller-Times in Corpus Christi. She shared with me her 3-step duties, an activity I included in teaching editing skills. Read the story for content. If you have questions, write them down. Read it a second time looking for errors. This time you won’t be caught up in the story; you know what it says. The third time, read it backwards for spelling errors. It’s amazing how successful the last guideline can be, especially in this day and age when computers constantly change words typed to words in its own limited vocabulary.
In Brunswick, she was a school para pro assigned to assist reluctant readers one at a time. She sat in a cubicle in the library and the children came to her and climbed in her lap, a no-no in today’s world. With her arms wrapped around the child, she assisted each one as they sounded out the words. It takes a world of patience to work with a dozen or more children every day in this manner. But it is the way they can learn. After their grueling work, the children laid back against her as she read the same story to the them, assuring them that they, too, would soon be able to read with ease.
During her last year in life, she reluctantly moved to assisted living. She would have preferred not moving, but she needed daily help. It wasn’t long before she had assumed the role of greeter for each new arrival; and at age 92, she assisted them with the ins and outs of living in the home.
But she truly found purpose by spending time with the people in the Alzheimer unit. Just as she worked with the children, she had a calming effect on patients limited by diminishing mental acuity. She was enlisted to travel as a “chaperone” whenever the facility took these patients on a bus ride. She would tell me, “I’m needed here.” And she was.
We all need to feel needed. We all need to work with purpose. That need of purpose is one of God’s greatest gifts to us.
Pastor and author Rick Warren, in his popular book, The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here For, writes, “Every new generation must rediscover God’s purposes for themselves. But God adds that the older generation is responsible to pass on what they have learned ‘so that each generation can set its hope anew on God.’” Psalm 78:7 NLT.
2021
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