Living Moments (Part 36) – Living For A Higher Calling.

On 29 June 2012, I was the first speaker at a conference in Kazakhstan. As it was held in conjunction with the 15th Anniversary of the organising body, I sensed a need to share about …’The Journey Of Life’.

As with many of my messages, I started by sharing with the audience about how I grew up in poverty.

Living through poverty was one of the best things to happen in my life.

While facing many challenges during my early years, I’ve learned to be a stronger and more resilient person.

It has also helped me to become more sensitive to the people around me. I have learned to be empathetic and approachable.

I want to reach out to others who are struggling and help them overcome their challenges in life.

Somehow, my impoverished beginnings have also compelled me to live for a higher calling and to serve a worthy cause.

I’ve learned that the greatest poverty is a poverty of meaningful dreams. There is a dearth of vision to make the world a better home.

The worst failure happens when I do not work with our Creator to leave the world in a better state than when I first came to it. I’ve not helped my loved ones and my community enjoy a better quality of life.

To live for a higher calling, I need to constantly examine the values in my life. I need to evaluate if they are platforms or pitfalls to achieve success.

Materialism.

Throughout our life, we have oftentimes been overly focused on materialistic pursuits.

We are sometimes more interested in what we have than what we gave, the quantity of our possessions rather than the quality of our contributions.

Material possessions are good slaves but bad masters. If we allow our pursuit and desire for possessions to exceed our desire to use and leverage on them to do good, they will control and enslave us.

We will be on the slippery road to spiritual and emotional bondage. This road of slavery can only lead to destruction.

Career.

On the journey of life, other than sleeping, we spend more time developing our career than on any other preoccupation.

It is sad that for many, instead of treating their career as a calling, they see it as just a way to earn an income or to climb a ladder in search of promotions and personal achievements.

They go to work and never seek to love their job and to excel in it. They choose to drift through time.

While their body may be at the workplace, their mind can be somewhere else. They dream of greener pastures and look out for a better employer.

All these while, they did not realize that the best workplace is what they made out of it. Slowly but surely, they are wasting their lives

They fail to see the meaning, purpose and significance of their career. And they fail to realise how much good they can achieve for their close ones, colleagues, customers, community and country.

Loved Ones And Friends.

As we journey through life, the people we can always count on are our loved ones and our friends. They are the ones that will stick with us through the ups and downs of life.

In our darkest hour, they are there for us. They will struggle with us to help us overcome challenges and make something good out of our life.

Sadly, we pursue many of our dreams out there but we fail to help them pursue their dreams.

Some of the greatest regrets we will have at the end of our life is that we did not give them more of our love. We did not repay them with more compassion, kindness, and care and concern.

My Soul.

From the beginning to the end of our journey in life, one of the most important parts of our life is our soul.

As Teilhard de Chardin, French Geologist, Priest, Philosopher and Mystic, once wisely said, “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.”

We can have everything in the world but if we lose our soul, we lose everything.

If we value our soul and allow our Creator to direct it, we can enjoy an overflowing abundance of life. We can live for a higher calling and serve a worthy cause.

In so doing, we can achieve greatness and make something great out of everything within and without. We can have a meaningful, exciting and fulfilling journey in life.

As we journey through life, we need to constantly examine and re-examine our values. We need to take a balanced and calibrated approach in adopting the right values at different phases in our life.

Each of the values has a proper place in our life and we should prioritise and use them accordingly.

As you put together the melody and lyrics that our Creator has put in your heart, I pray that you will create the best symphony. May you enjoy the poetic rhythm of life.

May your life be a masterpiece, one that will exemplify the best of life and will inspire others to greatness.

Go4It!

I hope this message will find a place in your heart.

By the way, I have also recorded other reflections.

Visit my Inspiration blog at http://liewinspiration.wordpress.com/

Visit my Transformation blog at http://hsrpatrickliew.wordpress.com/

Please read them and continue to teach me.

Life is FUNtastic!