The Six Days of Purpose: It’s ALL about You!

By Rev. Daniel Woodring

For six days, God preached His gifts into existence. It wasn’t because He just needed something to do. He was preparing the earth, filling it with the things necessary to sustain our lives—food, warmth, light, etc. All of creation was given for the purpose of serving man.

But why? Why did the Lord God create man? Why are you here? What is your purpose?

Some would suggest that we are here to worship God or to serve Him through our works. The problem is that, ultimately, God doesn’t need anything from us. Not only that, but it would be completely contrary to God’s nature to create us so that we could give something to Him.

Look at it this way: “God is love” (1 John 4:8), and love “seeks not its own” (1 Corinthians 13:5). It would have been impossible for God to create us in order to seek something for Himself. Put another way, love only knows how to give. Love can’t take. Your purpose is to be loved by God, that is, to be given His gifts of nature.

All these things, the things of nature that surround us, witness to God’s creating love. Through creation, you have food to eat, clothing to wear, shelter to protect you, the sun to warm you. They were created for this purpose because God loves you.

Moreover, God created the people around you for the purpose of loving you through them and their vocations. In the same way, God created you and has given you your vocations in order that He may love your neighbor through you. The things of creation themselves are the instruments that God uses to show and give to you His love. It’s all about you. But it’s about your neighbor too.

Mankind fell when Adam and Eve took what God had not given, thereby stepping away from His love. Yet God chose to restore His creation again through created things. His Son became flesh. His body was crucified on the wood of a cross. He bodily rose again from the dead.

And now, God gives this new creation to us through created things. You are washed from your sin by the water of baptism. God’s forgiveness is spoken through a human mouth. Bread and wine are His Body and Blood in the Lord’s Supper. Created things are used of God to be the instruments of His redeeming love.

Many Lutheran churches have recently returned to the apostolic tradition of having communion every Sunday. I have often been asked why, and the answer is really this simple: “because God loves you.” The Lord’s Supper is celebrated as a remembrance and proclamation of our Lord’s death, His greatest act of love. “God loved the world in this way, that He gave His only-begotten Son” (John 3:16). “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).To receive the sacrament is to receive God’s love.

God is love. You are beloved, and His love is all about you.

Rev. Daniel Woodring is pastor of Prince of Peace Lutheran Church, New Buffalo, MI and Executive Director of Higher Things.