"Sent-ness" (a made-up word that confusingly sounds like "sentence", and is probably just a euphemism for "purpose")

Being sent. What does that mean to me? I often think of it as a job to do, typical for my task-oriented self. But it’s more than that. It’s part of my identity. As followers of Christ, we are sent out into the world just as He was sent to us.

Sometimes I get frustrated with the question of purpose, of ‘sent-ness’. I feel that Emily and I have been called to Logan Square, to our church, to our friends, to our jobs. We are trying to figure out what that means: how to live lives of purpose in our jobs, who to strike up relationships with, basically being attuned to what the Holy Spirit is doing. And this is a struggle. Because, although we love Chicago, and feel like God is doing something with us, in us and through us, we also feel a very persistent pull to our friends in Zambia and to the Church in sub-Saharan Africa. And it’s frustrating, because this makes us feel like we are in transition, which we have tried to avoid. But it’s hard to think about planting roots in Chicago for the long term because we feel this pull, this urge to live in Africa and to do something about the issues that we care about, the issues that are close to God’s heart. At the same time, there are issues in Chicago that God also cares about just as deeply. And we are getting involved in issues such as affordable housing, education, and homelessness by connecting with the Logan Square Neighborhood Association, New Community Covenant Church, and By the Hand.

In addition, our occupations are a major component of our sentness. I am learning a lot at my new job, and I am finding out that I enjoy data analytics and driving program improvement in a consultative fashion. In the future, I really want to find an application for this skillset in a more justice-oriented organization. Ideally, both Emily and I would love for our interests, skills, and relationships to be aligned in a dream job with some cutting-edge organization. It’s hard to know if a job even approaching those benchmarks even exists, and it’s hard to know what to do or when to move on in search of that ethereal goal. These conflicting desires make it hard to decide when to visit our friends in Zambia. So we have all these plans, all these feelings of being sent to different places at different times. It’s hard to reconcile.

All of this means that it is vital for us to be attuned to the Holy Spirit. These questions of purpose are very important, but they can also be paralyzing if overanalyzed. We want to learn how to live in the present, recognizing the beauty in the mundane, seeing small fruits of the work of the Spirit, while also attentive to major shifts in life down the road according to what, to whom and to where God is sending us.