The other day we were driving and I a decent urge to go to a graveyard. Any graveyard. It wasn’t long before we found an old abandon one that if it hadn’t been restored by a local Eagle scout prospect, it probably hasn’t been visited in a solid 100 years.
As I was walking among the restored stones and looking at dates, the children were as much among the graves as their elders. Clearly the late 1800’s/early 1900’s was a tough time to be born. Cholera took out a lot of children as well as inadequate health facilities.
I began to think of them and all that is lost in a life. They never got to fulfill what God made them for. Some could have been great artists, engineers, doctors and athletes. God created them with a unique DNA to bless the world, but all that was in them was cut short.
So is it completely over for them? Done? Finished? The death of their purpose? For this life, the answer is yes. And that’s a tough pill to swallow.
But when I think of life in the garden, prior to sin, there was work, beauty and relationship. There is more to paradise than singing 10,000 verses of Amazing Grace.
I just got a real sense that although this life purposes might not be fulfilled, I do think more and more that they will be fulfilled in the next life, and all eternity. The story of the individual soul isn’t finished yet.
The implications matter. It means that the things that are written on our heart to do, we might not be positioned to fulfill them. This happens all the time to those born in impoverished nations or war-torn nations. Events such as these put an end to dreams as many know them.
But if it’s true that those purposes will be fulfilled in heaven, there is a grace that it isn’t so crucial that they be fulfilled in this life. Of course, God has written things in our hearts, minds and lives to be fulfilled in this life in order to bless others. But if circumstances cut that short, then it isn’t the end of the world when you have an eternal perspective.
It also gives me a greater freedom to surrender my longings and desires to the Lord and say, “Lord, use me in whatever way for the times that we are in.” This may mean God uses my gifts in a different or unique way that my heart desires. Our gifts can look different.
I think of Harriet Tubman and her life’s work of delivering slaves in the underground railroad. What she did was amazing. But did she have other aspirations? Such as to be a nurse? Or a teacher? But she was used in unique ways with other unique gifts to serve a purpose.
And for the person who wrecked their younger years with alcohol, drugs and loose living and finally got free from their addictions, but now their youth is gone and the opportunities that go with them. They can do other things, but sometimes the deepest desires of their heart go unfulfilled.
I think of the guy on the Gordon Ramsey cooking in prison show who always wanted to be a chef, but his drug addiction always got in the way.
I also think of a fellow high school student who was a runner prior to his car wreck that left him in a wheelchair. His dreams that were in his heart are probably still there, but what he could do with his life just had to look different.
For me there’s still the ache of dreams unfulfilled, and honestly they might never be fulfilled in this life, but it gives me peace to think that just because God wrote a story on this earth that wasn’t fulfilled, that there’s hope that heaven is waiting to write beyond what we could ever imagine.
