Understanding the importance of why something happened and what the purpose of it was is something that I tend to think about a lot. If I don't understand the purpose of something, then I probably won't do it. It's not always easy to understand why something has to be done, or why things happened a certain way. I feel that it is always important to accurately define the purpose of something in order to be able to extract 100% out of it. Everything has a purpose and sometimes if that purpose is misunderstood, bad things can happen. You don't expect it to do something but it does, or you expect too much and it doesn't happen. Or maybe that thing doesn't fulfill its duties at all, depending on what you thought its purpose was.
Although it is very helpful to know the purpose of something, it is not always possible to know. For example, it is not possible to fully define my purpose for living. There are so many things I could be here to accomplish. I could be here to help a friend learn something, to build something, or to be food for some worms when my body is buried. Sometimes I might not even see that there was a purpose behind a daily routine, or a simple task. But what I see is that something good always comes out of everything. Terrible things might happen to you but maybe that will teach you a lesson and help you to grow stronger, or avoid certain mishaps in the future. Friends you once had might not be with you anymore but the memories and things they taught you will remain part of you. You might fail an exam, or a course, only to discover that maybe you should be in a different program. I think that once you realize the true purpose and worth of something; an experience, a friend, a coworker, a device, you will learn to be happy with where you are and with what situation you are currently in. The only catch is that you probably won't be able to see the true purpose of an experience until it's already over - and even then, with much thoughtful reflection. Then you realize that, hey - no matter what I think the purpose of something was for and whether or not that's what happened, God's got a purpose for everything and that always works out. And that moment, the moment that you realize what God's purpose for that thing or experience and how good it was just creates an unstoppable joy in my heart. There is no end to how amazingly loving God is and how much He wants to show me that He can be trusted!
Esther 5, 6 & 7 today. It also has an interesting turnabout of something that happened to a man who misunderstood the true purpose of something. This was described in chapter 7. I know I read an extra chapter but the way Esther was written is so captivating that I didn't even notice until now!
Haman, one of king Xerxes' officials built a gallows that was about 23 meters high, thinking that he was going to hang Mordecai, a Jew, on it. Instead, the king found out that Haman was an evil man, who tried to annihilate all the Jews (including Queen Esther) and he was angry. He saw the gallows Haman had built, knew the purpose for which Haman had it built, and decided to hang Haman on it. What an unfortunate turnabout for Haman, who ultimately suffered from not knowing what the gallows were really going to be used for. For him, maybe nothing good came out of the gallows he built, but for the Jews who were God's chosen people, they were saved from the hands of an evil man.
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