Ashley Evans | Staff Writer

“The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” -Frederick Buechner

A young boy thought the future meant having the lifesaving responsibility of being a firefighter. Then, time passed and he thought his passion was to treat physical illness by becoming a doctor. Time passed more, and the young man decided justice could best be served in the courtroom, so he pursued law.

Now, this influential man is known not as the life-saving firefighter or the healing doctor or even the passionate lawyer. Rather, he is famously known for advocating for social justice for African-Americans, for courageously preaching at the pulpit and for boldly giving his “I Have A Dream” speech. Martin Luther King Jr. serves as just one example of a life with an unexpected destiny and the impossible possibility of changing the world.

An Unforeseen Path

Lauri Deason is a writer, missionary, screenwriter and professor at APU. However, the future she had always envisioned was drastically different from the calling God placed on her life.

“Ever since I was eight years old, I wanted to be a (creative) writer and shortly after that I decided I wanted to be a journalist,” Deason said. “In high school, I was a theater and yearbook kid. Everyone knew what I was planning for my future and what I was going to do. I didn’t want to get married (well maybe not ever) but marriage and kids were going to happen after my career. I wanted to go to New York and be a journalist.”

It was when she went to Mexico during her senior year of high school that Deason found herself in the middle of a ghetto, surrounded by little children. God broke her heart and ignited in her a passion for mission work.

In discovering her purpose for life, she explains that creating a mission statement helped to clarify what her greatest joys and deepest sorrows were. “A mission statement should be about who are you, not what you can do. And what you do should flow out of who you are,” Deason said.

Circular Not Linear

Deason says she never set out to become a professor, yet that was one avenue on the journey God took her on. In one of Professor Deason’s screenwriting courses, she compares God’s view of the future with writing a screenplay or making a movie.

“I wonder if maybe Him standing outside of time, looking to getting this story done, getting this movie made, is a lot more like that—circular and relational rather than a linear timeline of goals met,” Deason said. “He knows in His sovereignty all the possible endings that could come from all the possible exercises of our free will. And that is more than we can ever comprehend.”

Plan versus Purpose

A common misconception among humans regarding God’s view of our future is that each person is meant to be the main character in his or her own story. Yet God’s purpose goes beyond a selfish plan and into an everlasting purpose.

“Plans get focused on tasks and doings and goals to hit,” Deason said. “When you don’t get into your purpose of just being, it’s this interesting adventure that God takes you on and leads you through. There are a lot of twists and turns but it becomes a journey towards purpose. The ultimate goal is to usher in the Kingdom and be with Him forever. How you get to that, however, is a lot about purpose, joys, sorrows and who you are.”

Through the uncertainties of life and the vague fog of the future, God’s purpose remains. In the words of Martin Luther King Jr., “We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right.” The future is bright because what mankind might perceive as impossible, God knows to be possible.