I’ve added a new piece to my morning prayer routine, one suggested by my long-time friend and spiritual advisor, Susan. After returning from Kenya where she was single-minded in her goals for the mission trip, the tide of life American-style threatened to lift her off her feet. She offered me her solution. With so many interruptions, demands, and oh-crap! moments nipping at us all day, what might happen if each morning we asked God, “What is Your purpose for me today?”

The word purpose means “an intended or desired result; end; aim; goal.” It derives from the Old French porposer, “to put forth.” A daily purpose reminds us that we are sent by God each day: “For what am I put forth into this day?” Another definition of purpose is: “the reason for which something exists or is done, made, used.” So on those dark mornings when I’m waxing more existential this prayer takes on the urgency of: “Why do I exist today?”

Whether uttered with simple curiosity or agitated angst, the question “What is Your purpose for me today?” always brings a response. The answer may leap out from the texts of Morning Prayer, or it may arrive in the space of silent contemplation. But it always arrives. Sometimes the whole day goes by before His answer makes any sense. Sometimes I have to worry it like a jagged fingernail to uncover any meaning at all. I’m pretty sure sense and meaning are mostly beside the point. What matters is that I bothered to ask.

And God’s purpose for me is always uncomplicated, though seldom simple: be calm, stand firm, or listen. I’ve discovered that God is concerned as much with the way I am while I do something as He is with the actual task in question. I’ve also noticed that my way of being determines which tasks I select from the never-ending list of possibilities offered to me each day. And with my focus on just one day, I’m think I’m actually finding a little more love in the mix–maybe because love is one of those things that tends to diminish with distance and fall through the slats of a strategic plan.

This little experiment also reminds me that when we contemplate call or vocation, we often think of a) big swaths of time, and b) what were called to do rather than how we are called to be. But in fact, call and vocation function on a daily scale as well, and they have an ontological dimension as well as a functional one. The pastor I’m called to be today is different from the pastor I was called to be yesterday. The same is true of each of my multiple vocations: deacon, Christian, wife, mother, daughter, friend.

If you are one of the 45% of Americans who made a New Year’s resolution, you have about a 50/50 chance of succeeding. Maybe it’s the longer term of these resolutions that’s the problem, or perhaps we just pick tougher goals to tackle in a New Year. If you’re on the downhill side of that 50 percent, try this instead: think small, ask daily, love deeply.

love, one day at a time @ www.trinityspokane.org