An army chaplain tells of the time he was asked to preach at a church some 20 miles from the base. He took his family along, but had neglected to tell his six-year-old daughter where they were going. After a few miles on the road, she asked, “Dad, when we get to where we’re going, where will we be?” A good question! And one all of us should try to answer for ourselves.
Think of your life’s journey. When you get to where you’re going, where will you be? One year, five years, or even 20 years from now, if you keep heading in the same direction you are heading and keep doing what you are doing, what will your life look like? Not only vocationally and financially, but what kind of person will you be? Do you have a pretty clear picture of the way you would like things to turn out, or will you be as surprised when it happens as everybody else?
It has been my experience that most people do not spend much time with these questions. But as Henry David Thoreau once said, “In the long run, we only hit what we aim at.”
To live aimlessly is to waste this precious gift of life. But to live with direction is to live fully.
-- Steve Goodier
Image: Flickr.com/Peat Bakke
