Does Life Have a Purpose?
There was a farmer in Kentucky who bought a young colt at auction for fifty dollars. The seller didn’t say much. Just that the animal needed a home. So the farmer put him to work. Day after day, the colt hauled fence posts and dragged feed bags across muddy fields.
One spring morning, a man from the county stopped by and leaned over the fence rail. He stared at the horse for a long moment, then turned to the farmer with wide eyes.
“Sir,” he said slowly, “do you know what you have here?”
The farmer wiped his hands on his overalls. “Course I do. Good workhorse.”
“No, sir.” The man shook his head. “That animal is a thoroughbred. His grandfather won the Kentucky Derby. He wasn’t bred for a plow. He was bred to run.“
The farmer looked at the horse. The horse looked back, chest deep in mud, a harness worn into its shoulders.
He’d spent his whole life pulling weight. Nobody ever told him he was made for wind.
I wonder how many of us are living the same lie.
We get up. Go to work. Come home. Watch the screen. Fall asleep. Repeat. And somewhere in the middle of it all, a quiet voice whispers, “Is this it? Is this really what I was made for?”
The answer is no. You were made for so much more.
The apostle Paul puts it this way in Ephesians 2:10: “For we are God’s masterpiece, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” That word masterpiece in the Greek is poiema. It’s where we get the English word poem. You are God’s poem. His crafted work. Written on purpose, with purpose.
Jeremiah heard it straight from God’s mouth: “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future” (Jeremiah 29:11).
Your purpose isn’t a career. It isn’t a title. It isn’t something you stumble across in a self-help book at the airport. Your purpose is a Person. And that Person has been pursuing you since before you took your first breath.
So here’s the truth: You are not an accident. You are not a mistake. You are not the sum of your failures or the echo of what someone once told you that you’d never be. You are poiema. God’s masterpiece, and He’s not finished writing your story.
That thoroughbred spent his days in a muddy field, never knowing what he was built for. He never felt the wind he was made to run in.
But you still have time.
The God who fashioned you doesn’t see a plow horse when He looks at your life. He sees the stride He placed in you before you drew your first breath. He sees the course He laid out for you before the foundations of the world were set.
Stop pulling what was never yours to carry. You were born for the race, and the starting gate is still open.
Keep Looking Up!
May God bless your day.
Related devotionals: Can I know God personally? · What God wants you to do · Why settle for less?
Want more from Pastor Rodney?
If today’s devotional spoke to your heart, my books carry these same themes deeper. Stories of God moving in ordinary lives, scripture for tired pastors and weary parents, and steady reminders that heaven is closer than you think.