“Sweetie, you can do and be anything you want in this life as long as you’re willing to work hard and the pay the price for it.”

Did anyone lie to you like that when you were growing up? Did anyone try to sell you the you-can-be-anything-you-want-to-be myth? If so, did you believe it?

Certainly, you’ve discovered by now that it’s just not true. No matter how hard you and I work at certain endeavors there will always be some things that we can’t do well.

Even if we train and condition ourselves to assume a variety of roles, we still cannot be everything we want to be in life. The most outgoing introvert will never become a true extrovert. A people person will never be fully alive crunching data.

We can’t be anything we want to be; however, we can be everything God wants us to be.

Consider these words: “God packed you on purpose for a purpose.”[1] Just as the contents of a traveler’s suitcase identify his or her destination, so the contents of your personhood—your gifts, talents, aptitudes, ambitions, and dreams—uniquely identify where God would like to take you.

Have you spent much time studying the contents of your life? Have you intentionally identified the key components that make up you?

In chapter two of The Cure for the Common Life, Max Lucado encourages us to evaluate the “contents” of our suitcase. Those contents are unique to us—no one else has our exact portion of humor, compassion, intensity, or thought. No one else fits as perfectly as we do into God’s assigned niche for our life.

Whether you’re young or old, retiring or just entering the work force, let’s find that niche and excel there.

Summer Reading Program: The Cure for the Common Life Chapter Two “Unpack your bag.”

[1] Max Lucado, The Cure for the Common Life (Thomas Nelson, Nashville, TN: 2005): 13.