CROSSROADS – WHY AM I
DOING THIS?
Carbondale University of
Illinois May 1970. I stood in the crowd of protesters chanting, “Ho Ho Ho Chi
Minh, NLF is going to win.” I picked up a rock and threw it as hard as I could.
The minute it flew from my hand I was jolted! “What am I doing?” I’d gone too
far.
I was throwing a
baseball-sized rock into a line of policemen, not even thinking who or what it
could hit. I quickly backed out of the crowd of protesters and retreated to the
trailer. I waited for my friends. I was silent on the trip home.
And when I got there I had
some real soul searching to do. My next semester at school was awfully lonely.
I’d abandoned my protester friends and began to look inward and to the Lord for
answers.
At some point we all come
to crossroads where we’re startled into asking, “Why am I doing this?”
Second Kings 7 tells us
about four lepers who were in that predicament. The enemy was coming from
without the city and there was a great famine within the city. They just sat
there. Finally they woke up and “they
said one to another, ‘Why sit we here until we die?’” They realized they
were being foolish just sitting there and waiting to die. Instead they were
motivated by a tiny spark of hope.
Crazy hope, but hope none the less. They decided that they’d make a move
toward the enemy camp and just maybe there was a very slight chance something
good would happen. As it turned out, their hope was rewarded. As the lepers
went out, the enemy thought they heard a great army coming against them and
they fled.
“And when these lepers came to the uttermost part of the camp, they went
into one tent, and did eat and drink, and carried thence silver, and gold, and
raiment” (2Kgs 7:7). There was so much food and wealth, the whole city was able
to prosper from it.
The lepers’ action was motivated by hope and they were rewarded.
Life is relatively short. “For all flesh is as grass, and all the
glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower
thereof falleth away” (1 Pet 1:24). If we’re wise we can handle
the problem of motivations before a shocker comes, like my rock incident.
Here’s a lifesaving, life
changing exercise we can do now:
For a day or two write
down an inventory of all the activities you do and next to each write what motivates
you to do that activity: “Why am I doing this?” Be honest. “I don’t know” is
not a valid final answer.
If you really can’t come
up with anything, it’s okay to ask someone close to you. People close to us
sometimes know us better than we do.
Sometimes we may have to
re-examine our motivation for certain actions and sometimes we may have a valid
motivation but an inappropriate associated action.
Finding out what motivates
us is a step in becoming who we want to be.
Love, Carolyn
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