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I grew up following my father\u2019s job around the country. Dad was a submariner in the Royal Navy, which for a young boy was the coolest job in the world. When dad would come back from patrol, smiling, in uniform, he\u2019d carry that distinct \u2018I\u2019ve been underwater for a month\u2019 smell. I loved it. Sometimes, when he was away, I would choose to sleep underneath my captains bed \u2013 in my mind mimicking a submariners quarters \u2013 and ever since I\u2019ve always been comfortable in cramped spaces.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t think I really minded not having dad at home when he was away at sea. As I grew up I came to think of dad\u2019s job as special. Visits to HMS Neptune (the naval base on the Clyde) were turned in to contests to see how many sub-machine guns and Land Rovers I could spot. Little boy heaven.<\/p>\n
I remember one day, watching one of the then brand new Vanguard class submarines out on the Clyde, spotting some protestors in little boats trying to make a nuisance of themselves. Back then, as now, the national nuclear deterrent was the subject of much controversy. Dad was watching with me and pointed out some smaller, darker boats. He told me that the people on those boats, armed to the teeth, fit as Olympic athletes, dressed in camouflage with green berets, made sure that the protestors didn\u2019t get too close and cause real problems for the submarine. So who were these modern-day aquatic knights? These Defenders of the Nuclear Arsenal? They, said dad, were Royal Marines. And they, to me, were the second coolest men in the world.<\/p>\n
So when, at 18 I was wondering what to do with my life, I thought I would become a Marine. Disillusioned by school and the seemingly purposeless path through higher education to a job, a mortgage, retirement, and death, I chose the Marines as my answer to life. I reasoned that joining the Marines wasn\u2019t like starting another job. This wasn\u2019t a 9-5 casual thing. I wasn\u2019t to be a person, playing at a job during the day and living for the weekends, but a Marine: a 24-hour-a-day, 365-days-a-year identity that provided cool work from time to time.<\/p>\n
And so I went off to Commando Training Centre, Lympstone, for a weekend of tests to see if they\u2019d let me join the privileged ranks. During that selection opportunity I picked up an injury during one of the tests and didn\u2019t finish the weekend. I was utterly deflated. This was the first time I had had an injury. I dodged them all through school, thinking that the other boys were faking them to get out of rugby practice. This injury undid me. I was made rudely aware that I was fallible. I was breakable. And what I didn\u2019t realise then, but what I\u2019ve come to see over the years, was that something much deeper was going on inside of me. At that time I was searching for meaning for my life. Something to make it all matter. Having rejected school and other pursuits, I set my goals on the military. When I fell at this hurdle I didn\u2019t just come up short on one test, but flirted with the very edge of despair, toying with the fear that my life might just be, ultimately, purposeless.<\/p>\n
Having talked to others since, I don\u2019t think I\u2019m alone in the realms men looking to things in life to define their existence. Careers, women, fun, toys, hobbies \u2013 we look to people and things to bring us an identity. So often these things, fragile and easily breakable, let us down. Failure in relationships or in work can lead to deep despair as lives built around shallow purposes collapse in bits.<\/p>\n
To this problem the Bible offers us hope. Instead of looking to things on this earth to define our purpose, the Bible points to the person of Jesus as the doorway to all fulfilment:<\/p>\n
\u201cSo Jesus again said to them, \u201cTruly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.\u201d (John 10:7\u201310, ESV)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Jesus\u2019 story here, full of imagery familiar to his original listeners, depicts him as the doorway to the sheepfold. The doorway to the sheepfold was the way to safety and prosperity (if you were a sheep); it was the essential path to success. We \u2013 the sheep \u2013 to find life must go through the doorway that is Jesus. There\u2019s no set of rules concerning careers or earthly relationships here. There\u2019s no Buzzfeed \u2018Top 21 Things You Must Do Lead A Purposeful Life\u2019. Just an invitation to find fulfilment through the person of Jesus.<\/p>\n
If the fundamental problem of mankind is that we\u2019re missing something that we can obtain for ourselves, then we\u2019ll find it in the things of this world. We\u2019ll find it in work, relationships, possessions etc. But we, the collective we \u2013 humanity throughout the ages \u2013 have tried those things and have found them scarily susceptible to collapse given enough pressure. There are few things worse than thinking you have found the meaning to life and then one day waking up to find that it has been snatched away from you.<\/p>\n
However, the Bible describes the fundamental problem of mankind as something that we can\u2019t provide for ourselves. We are in a hopeless state, lost and cut off from our true purpose. It\u2019s to this damned problem that Jesus offers hope. In dying in our place, for our sin, settling our account, reconciling us to himself \u2013 to God \u2013 by rising again and defeating death He offers us a purpose that nothing in the entire Universe can take away from us.<\/p>\n
The passage above ends with Jesus offering us life, abundant life. Life to the fullest, were we can find purpose in our careers and our relationships and our possessions. Not in the essence of the thing, the object, but in the way that we and they reflect the purpose of God himself. We are free to be Marines, and husbands, and white water kayakers to the glory of God, knowing that it\u2019s not in those things that we find who we are and what we\u2019re worth, but it is in the saving act of Jesus 2,000 years ago.<\/p>\n
Abundant life is the state of deepest freedom, which releases you to be all you were made to be.<\/p>\n