When I drive for rideshare, I've learned to be intentional in how I go about it. I've studied the rideshare market here in Columbia and I know where and when the best passengers, the ones seeking good long trips that will pay the best, are most likely to be found. So I drive during those peak times and intentionally park in the spots most likely to be near those passengers.
I could be like a lot of rideshare drivers, who spend their time driving around town, constantly on the move, hoping to get lucky and be in the right place at the right time.
I used to be one of those drivers, when I first started driving rideshare. Until I realized I was just wasting gas and eating up all my potential income. Sometimes I really would get lucky and get a lot of calls for rides. But more often the rides I got weren't that great and my income was hit or miss.
For most people, daily life, moment-by-moment life, is lived unintentionally. We go about our days by habit, led by routine, with no grand purpose other than making it to lunchtime, going home at 4:00, eating three meals a day, working five days a week, and escaping the routine on the weekends - often just replacing the weekday routine with the weekend routine.
We think all that unintentional living will somehow satisfy us, but it seldom does. At best it numbs us, turning us into caricatures of what God intended us to be.
Even a lot of Christians seem stuck in their unintentional lives. The only difference is they added Sunday church attendance and a few other church-related habits. Maybe they've also adopted an unhealthy taste for Pharisaical moral judgment and politics.
Whether spiritual or non-spiritual, the vast majority of people traveling alongside each other on the road of life seem to have stumbled into one of these unintentional ruts.They stay there because they don't realize there's a better way. They've become satisfied with the happenstance rewards of unintentionally living.
But there is a better way. There is a reason for living, a purpose for the journey.
David waited until the second to last verse of his trip diary to spell it our for us.
Let me live that I may praise you,God didn't give you life so you could spend it stumbling blindly along, with no vision, without purpose. He gave you life and He sustains your life so you can fulfill His greatest intention for your life: that you may praise Him.
and may your laws sustain me.
Psalm 119:175
The reason for continuing the journey is to praise God with every choice you make. A life spent pursuing anything else is pointless.
The goal is not a destination. Yes, God has promised eternal life with Him in heaven. But that's not the goal of the journey. The goal is to praise God along the way.
Praise Him with your voice of worship. Praise Him with your voice as part of your daily conversation with your fellow travelers.
Praise Him on your knees in prayer. Praise Him with your hands and feet as you walk through your days among people who have no purpose.
Praise Him by loving each of your fellow travelers who are unaware they're also seeking God. Praise Him by helping them, listening to them, counseling them, encouraging them. Praise Him by keeping your spiritual senses attuned for the divine opportunities He puts along your pathway to plant and water and cultivate seeds. Praise Him by being the light in the world's darkness, by letting your words be seasoned with salt.
If that sounds like God is asking a lot of you, He is. That's why He made you a new creature, re-creating you to do the work He has prepared for you.
And He doesn't expect you to do it alone. He'll send other intentional people to walk and work alongside you.
And He'll continually turn your attention back to His Word, His laws that are not only written in a book but have been inscribed on your heart. The laws can help you by reminding you in hundreds of ways how to intentionally live to praise Him. They sustain you and keep the pilgrim progressing.
Intentionally.
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