Finding Fulfillment in LOST?

I considered blogging about the LOST finale today just like everyone else. Ultimately, I like our video director Trey’s suggestion that LOST creators should hold a press conference in which they simply answer bulleted questions.

1. What is the island?
2. What is the light?
3. Were they really in purgatory?
4. Where’d the polar bear come from?
5. What’s up with Claire’s hair?

I also considered the fact you probably don’t really care what I think about the finale…or that you don’t even watch LOST. Instead, I thought I would just build off of a tweet posted by @andrewosenga, one of my favorite singer/songwriters. He said:

“If Lost had a better ending, I could keep subconsciously hoping that things like TV might fulfill my incredible need for meaning & purpose.”

Hopefully the sarcasm there is slapping you in the face, but ultimately, Andy is right. We are all on this unconscious search for meaning and purpose, and when we don’t find it in our jobs or our relationships, we immediately turn to TV, internet, movies, books and hobbies to find it. We search fervently for the deeper meaning in literature and art as if there is some mystical nature to it. I’m as guilty of doing that as anyone. The snare is that much of art IS aesthetically fulfilling. For example, I love music, and I can easily be emotionally moved by great music. It elicits a response within me…something that I haven’t orchestrated or planned. It creates feelings of joy or sadness or wonder…..as any good art should. Aesthetic fulfillment, however, is temporal and temporary.

A few years ago I was the pastor of a small church in North Louisiana. This was my first full-time church job. I had felt called into ministry since my mid-teens, but I was still pretty green when it came to the day to day of actually being a pastor. While I felt a confidence and a gifting for standing up and talking…I was scared to death of the pastoral-care side of my job description. At that point, I had never been around much death, grief or loss. Now, all of a sudden, I was the guy people called when something happened. I was the one who was supposed to show up and bring comforting words. I was the one who was supposed to know what to do.

Only a few weeks into my job, I was called to the home of one of the ladies in our church. Her husband, an agnostic, never came to church with her. He was a former military guy, rough and brusque with a serious lack of conversational skills. In addition, he was easily forty years older than me. I was called to the house because he was dying of liver cancer. He had become yellowed and bed-ridden and doctors had only given him a short time to live. I was scared to death. What did I have to offer to this guy? He had far more life experience than I, and had undoubtedly seen things that I never had. What could I say that would comfort or bring about a change of heart?

I remember sitting in my car praying hard that God would use me despite my lack of experience and ability…and then I entered the house. Honestly, the rest of the evening was a bit of blur. I don’t really remember what I said or did, but I know that this formally resistant man, when faced with his own mortality, came to know Christ as his savior. Later we called several of our church members along with close friends and family into his bedroom and we baptized him.

When I got back in my car, I felt something that I had never felt in that way before…..fulfillment. The realization was that I hadn’t done anything, except made myself available to God to be used by Him, and it was the most fulfilling thing I had ever done. It’s this moment of knowing…this is it. This is how God would have me be used by Him.

Now, I confess that I don’t always do a great job of submitting myself to God, but I do know that true fulfillment lies within surrender. If you’ve been searching high and low for something in your life that will complete you …why not give God the opportunity to direct you. It may seem scary or outside your comfort zone, but God will never give you more than you can handle nor anything that He hasn’t equipped you for. When you’re in the moment doing exactly what God has called you to do…there really is nothing that equals it. Certainly not the final episode of a TV show.