 |
| WHAT 'S YOUR GOAL IN LIFE? "365 Guidelines for Daily Living" by Harold J. Sala "But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well"? Matthew 6:33 What is your goal in life? If you get there, will you really be satisfied? Tough questions, right? But isn't that what fulfillment in life is all about? George Eastman's goal was financial success. He got there too. In camera shops the world over, you will find the yellow boxes of film made by the Eastman-Kodak company. George Eastman was a Scandinavian-born inventor who had an idea: "You click the shutter and we do the rest." That idea turned Eastman from rags to riches, but reaching his goal didn't satisfy. Eastman lived in a 30-room mansion where a magnificent pipe organ was played during meals, but Eastman was far from happy. One morning he conferred with his business associates, then went to his room and scribbled these words on a piece of paper: "My work is finished. Why wait?" He then took a German Luger automatic and, putting it to his head, pulled the trigger. If accomplishment in life is your goal, then consider the life of Ernest Hemingway, one of the heroes of my youth. When I was in college I thought, "If I could ever write like Hemingway, wow, I'd have it made." Hemingway won the Nobel Prize for literature. He was famous for his character descriptions in works like A Farewell to Arms, The Old Man and The Sea, and For Whom the Bell Tolls. Still in my possession is a yellowed newspaper, the front page of the Los Angeles Times dated July 3, 1961. The headlines read, "GUNSHOT BLAST KILLS HEMINGWAY." The story reads: "Ernest Hemingway, Nobel Prize-winning novelist who wrote of violence and death, shot himself fatally in the head Sunday with a 12-gauge shotgun at his home near here." Obviously, a person can be tremendously talented and yet be unfulfilled and miserable. If fame or beauty is your goal in life, consider Marilyn Monroe. On August 5, 1962, newspapers told how this gifted and beautiful woman overdosed on Nebutol --- a drug which stopped her heart. Her psychiatrist smashed down the door to find her lifeless body. My hometown newspaper editorialized, "Marilyn Monroe died Sunday proving that even $10,000 a week won't buy peace of mind." Money, achievement, and fame. There has to be more, something which brings a quality to life beyond these. What's your goal in life? If you reach it, without God, there will always be an emptiness which will never completely satisfy. There is a place in the human heart which only God can fill, and nothing short of a relationship with Him will satisfy. |