Today, August 22, 2021, I start the Pink Peppercorn Press blog. Again.

And again. And again . . .

How many attempts have I made to get all these ducks in a row? To get all the social media apps connected and synchronizing, and set up, before I had even committed to one word?

How many plugins have I downloaded to add functionality to the site, to make it work just like I wanted? Let alone, how many different website themes have I changed it to?

Years of work, and rework, and dissatisfaction, and distraction, while this “idea,” this child, which was gestating inside of me, just lay there, waiting.

I even changed the logo, after having spent countless hours perfecting the colors and interconnected-ness of the first one. And still the website just lay there, not ready. 

Because I wasn’t ready.

And time passed by. And years passed by. And I became older, but not wiser, because I had yet to accomplish anything, this site’s “Coming Soon!” promise becoming quite stale.

And events would happen within our culture, or I would have this wonderful word of encouragement come to me, and I would think, “Boy, if only that blog was active, I could write about this.”

But it wasn’t active, and it still needed so much work before I could be carefree enough to simply blog in it . . . and do what I was supposed to do with it.

But in an instant, it seemed, our entire world turned upside down.

Our Federal election was hijacked and my nation is at war. A war the likes we’ve never seen or experienced before. Our conservative states now warring to retain their independence from a unseen adversary who has blinded the minds of our ruling federal bureaucratic class. For decades.

The good news in all this is, that we’ve finally become alert to this enemy who’d been taking more and more ground these past decades because of its cover.

In other parts of the world, our government’s faux-ministration just caused a horrific, condemnable, and catastrophic crisis in Afghanistan. Tens of thousands of lives may possibly be taken.

And this may be the endgame of their plan to begin with – the spilling of innocent blood. To feed the blood-lust of the god they are serving.

And what are we to do? How are we to answer? What is our place – our position? What role are we being called to play in this new world we’ve woken up in?

This is the question I’ve been struggling with these past few days.

My life is quiet, comfortable. But the world around me is collapsing. Do I stay quiet in my complacency, in my security? Or do I step up? Speak out?

Recently, Eric Metaxas has been making frequent appearances to discuss his book about Bonhoeffer, a German pastor who openly opposed the Nazi regime. He’s doing so because we’ve quickly stepped into a time in history that reflects the world Bonhoeffer lived in.

And the question put before us is, will you be a Bonhoeffer, and stand out and speak up for what is right, even if it costs you your life? Or will you stand quietly by and watch, as freight car after freight car filled with innocent human beings on their way to death camps, passes you by?

And if you decide stand aside and watch, what makes you believe that this time, the one they’re coming for won’t be you?

This is the world I’ve woken up in.

In Afghanistan, the ones they are seeking to exterminate this time are not the Jews, but the Christians. If we stand aside and do nothing, how long do you really believe you have, before this comes to your land and they come after you? It is, after all, their plan.

But what am I to do? I’m not called to Afghanistan, or to take my fight there.

And that was my dilemma. Because I couldn’t stand by idly either. So how do I participate? How do I make a difference, when I don’t have a platform, a presence, a power, to make a difference?

“It’s time to do what you’re called to do.”

These are the words I’m hearing the Spirit of Life speaking, not just to me, but to all who would listen.

I have spent decades searching for that elusive purpose for being, the reason I was put on this earth. It had to be so complicated, so hidden, so hard to find. And so I searched and searched to see if I could find it. To see if one bright day God might show me favor and shine a heavenly light on me while angels sang in unison around me, and a sign fell from heaven saying, “This is what you’re here for!”

But yet it never came. The sign never unfurled.

But the funny thing was, that I was absolutely sure of what everyone else was here for. One of my favorite sayings was, “God made you who you are on purpose.“

Essentially, God has “called” you -has created you – to simply be you! That is your purpose.

But that couldn’t hold true for my life. That was too easy. It had to be more complicated than that, more obscure.

I wrote. I’ve written all my life. Writing came easily, and I’ve always known it was a gift from my creator. So it couldn’t be just that. That was too simple. And I would never call myself, “A Writer.” No! That was a title others bestowed on you when you’d earned it.

Writing was what I did. Not who I was.

And so, because it came so easily to me, I looked for the part that was hard. The part that required suffering and angst, like I had grown up being told Christians had to do for Christ. I had to find my cross, to bear my cross!

And in the process of looking for that elusive purpose, I put off being myself and doing what I was created to do – Write. Be a voice. To speak up and be heard.

Because that was too easy for someone like me.

Then our whole world turned upside down. And no longer was there time to search and to ponder, and to look for angst in purpose. There was no more time . . . for distractions.

It was time to act. Even if all “acting” meant was just being who it was I was created to be.

I may not make a hill of beans difference to the plight that is facing Afghanistan at this time in history, because I have no influence there. Or in my nation.

But if I don’t begin speaking up now, begin being who I am, and taking my place in this world in which I’m living, how will I ever make a difference or effect a change in my world in the future?

I have to start some time.

And that sometime is now, regardless of how prepared or unprepared I am at the moment. Everything else will come into place. This blog must go live, so that when the time does come for the difference to be made, the foundation of this work not only will have been built, but also the walls and roof, might already be constructed so that it might give shelter to all who enter here.

And that is how I purpose to act.

You too were created for the time you live in, to do the thing you were created to do. That, also, may or may not be a call to make a difference in Afghanistan. But wherever it is, your purpose is to make a difference. To be the difference by being the you that you were created to be.

Nobody can be it but you. Nobody else can do the part you were put on this earth to do.

So do it. Do you!

 

Life Purpose