WHY

People have wondered for eons why life is so hard. Why has it been such a struggle to discover or find the purpose and meaning of human existence? Ponder as people have pondered, philosophize as philosophers have philosophized, the answer has seemed to be just out of reach, just beyond what we know.

Ask a potter what they are making on their wheel, and they can tell you right away. Ask the vessel on the shelf after the artist is finished and the pot is glazed and fired, and you will get no reply. The piece of art itself suggests that there is meaning and purpose, but to know for certain, you must ask the artist.

God created and called into being humanity, and He made us to be in a living relationship with Himself. Human living was meant to be the Life of God being lived in us and through us so that we might become all we were meant to be. There was to be understood purpose and meaning growing in us daily as we drew Life from our Creator. There was freedom to respond and to follow the heart and will of God, as we were meant for a living relationship, not some sort of robotics. 

Sadly, humanity chose to attempt to live and find meaning and purpose separated from the One who had created us. We believed a lie that "more knowledge" would make us "like God" when we were already made in His Image and Likeness. Separated from the heart and mind of God, we lost our bearings completely. We lost identity, ultimate meaning and purpose. We lost what was meant to be "home" and now lived in brokenness, in conflict with nature and one another.

You see, we were made to walk in the will of God. There is no other place where human beings can find peace, wholeness, meaning, purpose and rest. God did not abandon us to the separation from Life that our rebellion had caused. There was no way for us to unbreak what we had broken. What is broken cannot fix itself. But God made a way for us to be restored to Him and to begin to grow into, to return to a life that would grow in meaning and purpose from the One Who made us.

God, Himself, fully became a human being while remaining fully God. As the Creator, He was a man worth an infinite number of human beings and thus was able to pay the debt of the sum-total of humanity's sin and death. He died as no one has ever died. Being Life itself, He could only die by choosing to die. Death had no claim on Him for He was sinless, but He bore the death humanity had enslaved itself to. He died our death, but death could not hold Him and He rose from the dead. His resurrection was not the resuscitation of a corpse but the transformation of the humanity He had made His own. His was a "New-Creation" body, one not susceptible to human frailty anymore, but an eternal resurrection body; the kind He has promised that one day all His followers will have when He brings time to an end.

Most of humanity still lives in the fog of self-relance, envy, jealousy, greed and pride. It's no wonder so many still ask, "Why am I here? What's the purpose? Is there any meaning to life?" The answer is a resounding YES. It's the gift of God to all who will but turnaround, believe, and receive New Life in Jesus Christ.