Limited Objectives

I think the best results are obtained by people who work quietly away at limited objectives such as abolition of the slave trade, or prison reform, or factory acts or tuberculosis, not by those who think they can achieve universal justice, or health or peace. -C.S. Lewis

It’s unrealistic for any one person so think that he call solve all the social injustices in the world. It is realistic to find the one thing that the Lord has given me to focus on. A house divided cannot stand. A person divided falls apart.

I don’t plan on achieving world peace, discovering a new element, creating a society where justice prevails or finding the cure for cancer. Those achievements are out of my scope of reality. However, God has ordained people for each of these goals. Each human was born ‘for such a time as this’. The tricky part is finding what you were born for and doing it instead of following the flock of chickens around you and wasting energy pecking at everything and accomplishing nothing.

I have lived the chicken life, saying yes to every good cause and ended up worn out and frustrated. Why was I frustrated? My objectives were unlimited and undefined. When I should have been working away at the limited objectives right in front of me.

What are those objectives? The Lord places them right in front of me and places the desire in me. I don’t have a strong desire to work in a lab and do chemical research. I don’t have a desire to run for political office and spend countless hours writing laws for social reform. I do have a desire to help hurt children, to care for the orphan, to educate those around me. This blog is one tiny objective. My family is a larger limited objective. As I pray and work within the four walls of my home, the Holy Spirit leads and teaches me in the way I should go for my family. He heals hurts, makes connections, brings correction, binds together what was broken all for His glory, living testimonies of His grace.

These breathing testimonies go into the world and accomplish their limited objectives, whatever God gives them to do quietly. Write a novel? Pastor a church? Find a cure for cancer? Be a missionary? Be a Mom? Feed the hungry? Start a social network? Run for Senate?