Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.
~ Henry David Thoreau

The “song still in them.” All of my life this quote has resonated with me, and yet I find it most curious. What does it mean to “go to the grave with the song still in them?” Does it mean that they died unfulfilled? Or that they never understood their reason for being, searching for the elusive answer to “why am I here?” Does it mean that they had not accomplished their dreams, or that somehow they had failed?

I, like most people, grew up with the adults around me asking, “what do you want to be when you grow up?” How is a child suppose to answer that? Is the answer found somewhere in the role playing we do as children? Is it found by becoming enamored of someone we see on television, hear on the radio, or see in a magazine? Or do our parents plant the seeds that form our ideas of what we should become in life? Or perhaps our teachers? As adults we hear ‘teachers’ and ‘personalities’ of all kinds telling us that we should be living our “authentic lives.” Who decides what our authentic life is? What is it suppose to look like?

I struggled with this question off an on for nearly forty years of my life. It often lead me down one path or another for a time, but none of them ever felt quite right. But in the background, as an undercurrent in my life was my faith. Sometimes, my faith was strong and deep and it helped me persevere and preserved me through horrific events that no one should have to endure. Other times, when life was seeming to go smoothly, it was in the background as a soft murmur but always it was there.

One day in my forties, while taking a class to become a certified coach it occurred to me that no one could possibly live an authentic life if they did not know why they are here to begin with. Now a good many of us who spend a great deal of time working on personal growth, moving towards understanding and enlightenment believe that we are all here to make a “contribution’ of some kind. A contribution that only we can make. And I certainly believe that it is true that we are all here to make a contribution to the quality of life on earth, but why? And of what benefit is our being here to ‘US?’

Then it happened. Picking up my bible as I do daily, I opened to Genesis to re-read the creation story.
On the sixth day, there it is… that sixth day:

27 So God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.

God created mankind in His own image. Male and female in His own image. Now I have read this hundreds of times in my life but on this particular day it penetrated deep within me. God had created the earth, the sun, moon, and stars; the plant life, the oceans, the animals, and all living things. But man, man He created in HIS image. There had to be a purpose for man to be created in His image, and reading on I found the answer in Genesis 3:8 – “Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the LORD God called to the man, “Where are you?” ”

God created us to be HIS companions; to fellowship with HIM. It is clear from Genesis that before Adam and Eve ate fruit from the tree in the middle of the garden, their purpose was to rule over the life on the planet and to fellowship with God. Since the encounter with the serpent in the garden, the eating of the forbidden fruit, and being cast out of the garden – man has been on the eternal quest to answer the question, “why am I here?” What was once clear, has been obscured by sin.

Now, we are here to “work the dirt” from which we were made. To labor in this life, to know the difference to between good and evil – and to be subject to the whims of good and evil; to live in a world now corrupt by sin and to find our way back into fellowship with God the Father, through His Son Jesus Christ.

It is clear that we cannot live an authentic life by whim, dreams, positive thinking, ‘The Secret,’ or any hocus pocus. We cannot live an authentic life until we have been restored to the Image of God. Once restored to that right relationship through the shed blood of Jesus Christ, we can live our lives fully knowing that our purpose is to become that man or woman that God created to fellowship with Him.

Then and only then will we realize that all things we do from a spirit of love (the very love that comes from knowing The Grace of God) will make a lasting contribution to the quality of life on earth. And any suffering that we endure, any horrific events that befall us, all work to make us that perfect creation that God the Father longs to fellowship with as His companions in this life and the next.

This then, is what it means to me when I say, “Now I become myself.” Now, because of the Blood of Christ I am restored to my right relationship with God and am able to become that person He longs to fellowship with. That person whom I was always destined to be.

In a spirit of love and fellowship,