Not to brag: In grade school, I was picked to be the captain of the kickball team during recess more than my fair share, and it is the highlight of my sporting life. As I progressed through elementary school, the times I got picked to lead in sports, or in whatever else, were exciting on the one hand and beyond me on the other. Beyond me, I say, because, while I understood the task at hand, on the deepest level, I didn’t have a clue where I was leading anyone to.

From kickball to cub scouts to safety patrol, the leadership doors that opened to me were impressive, I know you’re thinking. Yet to what ultimate end? There had to be more. Such was the theme that played in the back of my otherwise-carefree mind throughout my childhood, and into the uncertainties of adolescence.

In early adulthood, I had a forlorn stretch of time where my meaning-of-life thoughts turned into a full Solomonic lament: “Meaningless, meaningless, everything is meaningless…a chasing after the wind” (Ecc 1). (A quick search on the internet for the word Ecclesiastes, surprisingly, produces this accurate, albeit generic, description: The book of Ecclesiastes shows us in stunning ways that the key to life is not in life itself. Pleasure, materialism, knowledge, and money are all futile and folly. True happiness comes from centering our lives on God, not ourselves.) They say if you read Ecclesiastes and can’t relate, you won’t care to read the rest of the Bible. Well, that wasn’t my deal. I could relate.

Which is why, a quarter century after my kickball acclaim—twenty-five years of doing well-enough, but not knowing the real point of my existence, of chasing all manner of illusions through many winds—at God’s prompting, I chose to read the Bible, and smartly accepted Christ as my Savior. 

At once and over time, I came to know that life was brimming with meaning. I learned of the beginning and the end (it’s in the Bible); learned why we are all here, and where it all leads; learned that God is the author of love, and that relationships are the currency of heaven; learned that Jesus is my Leader (for “[He] is the head of the church, His body” -Eph 5:23), and that I am His follower; and learned, to our point, that in any context in which He places me to lead—in my family, in the workplace, in the world at large—it is ultimately not as the Leader, capital L, but as a leader (or as a sub-leader under Christ, if you will) with an overriding mission to help other people to know all this, too (Mt 28:19-20), or at least to help them to remember it. 

In any case, it was all good to learn. And it all helped bring me to the life-changing realization that, while being a leader is a good and wonderful privilege, following Jesus is the acme of life. In fact, it’s the entire point of it. 

I hope this encourages you to follow Jesus today.

Kevin Murray
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