Are you in this world by chance or by creation? Are you a product of fate, or are you placed here for a purpose? Is there a reason why you exist, or did you just happen? These are questions Victor Hugo posed in his classic novel Les Miserables (meaning The Poor Ones, The Wretched Poor, or The Victims). Hugo's plot follows the lives and interactions of several French characters over a seventeen-year period in the early nineteenth century, starting in 1815 and culminating in the 1832 student uprising called the June Rebellion..

The main character, ex-convict Jean Valjean, had experienced what most would consider a senseless and meaningless existence in which he had been imprisoned for almost two decades for stealing a loaf of bread. After leaving prison, Valjean experienced God's forgiveness and grace in an encounter with a priest, an experience that changed and shaped his life. This was his turning point. Valjean's experience of God's redemption and grace led him to live a life seeking to introduce others to God's grace. He discovered a "calling" for his life.

Others in the story also wrestled with finding purpose in life, including the students who longed for societal change in France. In the musical version of Hugo's novel, on the night before their deaths on a barricade, a group of the student revolutionaries contemplate whether to fight or run. One of them, a young alcoholic student named "Grantaire," asks a series of cynical but poignant questions. He sings,

Will the world remember you when you fall?
Could it be your death means nothing at all?
Is your life just one more lie?

If there is no purpose to our lives, then the answer to Grantaire's last two questions is a resounding "yes."

These issues come to the fore in the "turning point" encounter we come to this weekend. The bedrock of a biblical worldview is that we are purposed, purposeful, and intentional parts of the creation of a personal God who is working out a marvelous plan in this world. We do not "just happen" to be in the world. We are not the product of random selection but of a loving God's choice.

One implication of this is that each one of us has a calling from God. And, a significant part of that calling is that God intends to do his redemptive work in the world through our lives. When we live with a sense of this calling, we experience life to the full (John 10:10). God's Word teaches us through showing us the turning point of an interesting man named Elisha.

To His Glory,

Dr. Greg Waybright
Senior Pastor