The Transition Of Purpose

Today I want to preach on purpose!

Williams tells a story of someone “lost his purpose” --

it is the story of Jacob Brodzky.

a shy Russian Jew whose father owned a bookstore. The older Brodzky wanted his son to go to college. The boy, on the other hand, desired nothing but to marry Lila, his childhood sweetheart.

She was a French girl as passionate as he was passive.

A couple of months after young Brodzky went to college, his father fell ill and died.

He returned home, buried his father, and married his love. They moved into the apartment above the bookstore, and Brodzky took over its management.

The life of books fit him perfectly, but it cramped her.

She wanted more adventure -- and she found it, she thought, when she met an agent who praised her beautiful singing voice and enticed her to tour Europe.

Brodzky was devastated. At their parting, he reached into his pocket and handed her the key to the front door of the bookstore.

"You had better keep this," he told her, "because you will want it someday. Your love is not so much less than mine that you can get away from it. You will come back sometime, and I will be waiting." She kissed him and left.

To escape the pain he felt, Brodzky withdrew deep into his bookstore and took to reading as someone else might have taken to drink. He spoke little, did little, and could most times be found at the large desk near the rear of the shop, immersed in his books while he waited for his love to return.

Nearly 15 years after they parted, at Christmas time, she did return.

But when Brodzky rose from the reading desk that had been his place of escape for all that time, he did not take the love of his life for more than an ordinary customer.

"Do you want a book?" he asked.

That he didn't recognize her startled her. But she gained possession of herself and replied,

"I want a book, but I've forgotten the name of it." Then she told him a story of childhood sweethearts. A story of a newly married couple who lived in an apartment above a bookstore. A story of a young, ambitious wife who left to seek a career, who enjoyed great success but could never relinquish the key her husband gave her when they parted. She told him the story she thought would bring him to himself.

But his face showed no recognition.

Gradually she realized that he had lost touch with his heart's desire, that he no longer knew the purpose of his waiting and grieving, that now all he remembered was the waiting and grieving itself.

"You remember it; you must remember it -- the story of Lila and Jacob?”

After a long, bewildered pause, he said, "There is something familiar about the story, I think I have read it somewhere. It comes to me that it is something by Tolstoy."

Dropping the key, she fled the shop. And Brodzky returned to his desk, to his reading, unaware that the love he waited for had come and gone.

His purpose had left…

there is an old country song that George Jones covered after his divorce from Tammy Wynette…

There goes my only possession There goes my everything I hear footsteps slowly walking As they gently walk across a lonely floor

And a voice softly saying Darling, this will be goodbye forever more

There goes my reason for living There goes the one of my dreams There goes my only possession There goes my everything

As my memory turns back the pages I can see the happy years we had before Now the love that kept this old heart beating Has been shattered by the closing of a door

There goes my reason for living There goes the one of my dreams There goes my only possession There goes my everything

He recognized that his purpose had slipped from him…

I wonder today how many can relate those lyrics to their walk with God?

You may not be backslidden, but you know something has changed…

You may be faithful, but your not as strong as you once were…

you may love God, but know that its not as it was…

prayer

purpose

noun

1.

the reason for which something exists or is done, made, used, etc.

In the fairy tale Alice in Wonderland.

Alice asked Cheshire Cat, "Would you tell me please, which way I ought to go from here?" "That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the cat. "I don't much care where," said Alice. "Then it doesn't matter which way you go," said the cat.

Many of us have lived our spiritual life like alice…

pointless, having no purpose, drifting on the sea of life… if we are down, we mottle through… if we are up we thank God and seem to live at ease… But do little to effect either extremes…