Finding a North Star: Understanding Your Life Purpose

Sixteenth-century seafarers such as Magellan and Sir Francis Drake sailed unfamiliar seas with none of the modern tools of navigation.

To set course, a sailor waited for the sun to set. Then, using an astrolabe, they plotted the course. The device was simple. It had a site and a measure that showed angles.

With an eye to the astrolabe’s site, the mariner pointed at Polaris, the North Star. It was the point that never moved (due to the earth’s rotation).

With this never-moving object, the seaman could determine where he was and how to proceed.

Do you have a Polaris to guide you as you travel through life?

The image, which has become archaic and quaint, is needed in a society cut adrift on the sands of whim and immediate gratification.

Jesus had his North Star.

He sat with the morally reprehensible of his society, tax collectors, and those who did not keep the minutiae of Jewish custom. This practice irritated and perplexed the straight-laced moral police of the times, the Pharisees.

Why do you eat with them?

The simple answer was the sick need the doctor, not the well.

When he entered Jericho, that oasis in the desert, throngs met him. Many wished for an audience with the miracle worker and teacher. Yet, pointing at his North Star, he called Zaccheus out of a sycamore to eat with him.

Why select Zaccheus for his dinner companion rather than the mayor or rabbi of Jericho?

He came to seek and save the lost.

Jesus defined success by that standard. His North Star was to go to the lost to save them. His North Star told him to reject the many for the few.

What is your purpose in your life? It’s a big question that few answer. Churches omit seeking it. Instead, they plan programs that please but don’t hit the right target. Businesses pursue plans that bankrupt them. It wasn’t the right direction.

People drift and grow confused when they wander through life. Many spend a life adrift, hoping someone shows them the way.

Lewis Carrol wrote a story called Through the Looking Glass. We refer to it as Alice in Wonderland. In an exchange between the disoriented Alice and the mysterious Cheshire Cat, Alice asks, “Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?” “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat. “I don’t much care where–” said Alice. “Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat. “-so long as I get SOMEWHERE,” Alice added as an explanation. “Oh, you’re sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if you only walk long enough.”

It doesn’t matter how you go without a pole star because you end up where you never wanted to go.

When adrift, how do you get back on track? And how do you know if you don’t have a North Star?

When you make plans, how do you select?

Finally, how do you know you are where you want to be?

All are questions of people and groups who need the answer of “here is what I want from life, and I know if I am successful.”

But no one can assign or bequeath you your purpose. It is discerned through careful searching and thinking. That is why so few have one because it forces a person to take a journey to the center of their soul.

I have visited people in great pain with terminal illnesses on several occasions. Each tends to ask the same question in different ways.

“Why am I still here? Why doesn’t God take me?”

I have a standard response because it is true. “You are here because you still have something to do with your life.”

You and I remain on the planet to do something. Find that something, and you can always know where you are, what you are to do, and how to get back on course.

At the end of your life, what would you tell your grandchildren you did with your life? Now, start today to pursue that.

And follow the North Star.