What is it to live a purposeful life; better yet, what does it mean to live a purposeless life? I think that to live a purposeless life is to ignore what you know that you are good at, your God given talents, those things that make you smile while you are landing that jump, planing that board, finishing that painting or just about anything that you can imagine. We have all been given gifts and talents in some area of our lives. To ignore using these talents and to just exist is truly a waste of what we have been given. In Matthew 25 Jesus tells a parable of a man that entrusted talents to three servants. You know the story, the two invested the talents and multiplied them for their master, the one simply buried the talent in the ground and gave it back to his master. Are you burying your talent, only to give it back? “No, that’s OK, I don’t want it, here, you can have it back.” If you don’t want it, do you think you will receive anything else in exchange? What you have been given is not by accident, what you do with it is a big deal. What you don’t do with it is an even bigger deal. Can you imagine a ship in the ocean without a rudder? Without a rudder it would either sail in circles or be blown by the wind wherever the wind is blowing. Purposeful living is sailing a ship with a rudder. You have a course, or at least you have a general direction of where you want to go. If you don’t have a purpose, then you will be blown by other people’s emotions and drama, whatever wind is prevailing at the time. Another analogy is either being a magnet or being a piece of steel. Purposeful living is a magnet that draws others to your purpose. They want to be a part of what you are doing. Purposeless living is being a piece of steel, drawn to whatever magnet is close by, not having any magnetism of your own. We all have magnets within us that draw us north, to that place that bring fulfillment and peace in our lives. For me, Christ is my true north, giving me the ability to know how to utilize that magnet that is planted within me to give purpose to my life; but that’s not all, He expects me to use what He planted within me to bring meaning and purpose to myself and others around me. When we don’t have a sense of direction, it’s easy to get sucked into the drama of others lives. If you are sailing a ship, you have to keep an eye on either the compass or a spot on the other shore to sail to. You can’t take your eyes off of it or you will end up either lost or miles downwind from your intended destination. You don’t have the time to watch the drama in the dingy floating next to you. You know that you have a destination and the dingy holds just enough of a distraction to get you off course. This doesn’t mean that if the dingy is sinking you don’t pause to help out, but you don’t put out your anchor and live there, you get them on their way and pick up where you left off. Some have a purpose that is in the limelight more than others, yet that doesn’t make them more important, just a different purpose and a different destination. You have your own specific destination, to sail to where others are intended to go, only makes getting back to your destination take longer. With all of the social media, it’s easy to read and view all of the squawking seagulls trying to bring attention to themselves, yet again, this is just a distraction. I dare you to live your own purposeful life and to not check your Facebook status every 10 minutes, being pushed by the wind of who likes your post and who doesn’t. Your life is more important than that. Let the 99% of people live by the opinion of others, you live guided by your purpose. I dare you to set sail for that purpose you were created for or do you want to continue to live your life based upon a daily opinion poll? The choice is yours.