Yesterday morning the highway fell behind me as I drove the familiar road to my workplace. My thoughts tumbled around the existential as they often do when I’m left with nothing but the white noise of an engine and my mind.

I raised a question to my Creator.

‘God, what do you want from me?’

I wrestle endlessly with the idea of ‘purpose’. I goad questions like ‘how do I pursue my passions?’ and ‘what opportunities should I be striving towards?’ and ‘how do I align my dreams with God’s will for my life?’ into the ring and try to pin them into submitting their answers. But inviting such combat into my thinking rarely proves to be useful.

More often than not, it is when I lift a direct plea to God that all the other questions that were lined up for a fight tend to wander away. So I’m slowly learning that I don’t always need the answers to all my questions, I simply need to set them free.

But today an answer did come. It came in the form of a clear, Spirit-whispered thought. “Do your job and do it well.”

I understood. No, this wasn’t a directive to keep plodding along to the rhythm of wake, eat, work, eat, sleep, repeat. This wasn’t a demand to stop dreaming. This was a reminder to be present. To lean into the work of that day and all its immediate opportunities. To mark the assignments sitting on my desk, to say yes to connecting with others, to trade in my worrying and wondering about the future for a greater joy and energy to apply to the ‘right now’.

And now more than ever I see that this – the learning to live in the present – is a lifetime lesson, but it is one I’m grateful to be learning.