Brighten Your Day

"I just don’t know what my purpose, what my mission in this life is!," a friend wrote me in an e-mail recently. For some reason her letter awakened an old memory in me so I wrote her back and shared this with her.

When I was a young Dad my family was struggling just to get by. I was getting a few days work here and there as a substitute teacher. I was teaching every subject and every grade from kindergarten to seniors in high school. Then near the end of the school year I got called in at the last second to teach at a local grade school. I got there late worrying about the Summer to come and the lack of work it would bring. The class I got had a bad case of Summer break fever too. To say they were rambunctious would be understating it. They were bouncing off their seats, talking in class, and not playing attention to anything I said. Finally, it was time for recess and I was as happy as they were to get outside the hot classroom. I watched them run and play and hoped it would wear them out so the afternoon wouldn’t be as tough as the morning had been on me. It was then, however, that a little girl ran up to me. She had a handful of freshly picked wild flowers. She reached a Daisy out to me and said, “This is for you, Mr. Mazzella.” In that second I felt a joy I hadn’t felt all day. I smiled and thanked her for her gift as she skipped happily away.

You see, in that instant that little girl had completed a part of her purpose here on Earth. In that second she had completed a moment of her mission. The truth is every single thing we do is a part of our purpose here. Every single thing we do is a part of our mission. God put us here to learn to love each other as He loves us. It is a life long process too, so stop worrying about your mission and your purpose. You are living them each and every day.

The same is true for all of us. May all your days then be full of life, learning, and love.