“What am I doing here?

     Honestly, I hate this music… bum, bum, bum…

     And this is supposed to be fun?

     Man! Why does everyone think that getting drunk and partying at the local club is so awesome?

    And this will be my life?

    What’s the point of it all?

    What is the meaning of my life?”

Again disappointed. All I wanted was to be like others.  I so badly wanted to turn 18 so I could finally go to local nightclub.  And this was it?  I went to both clubs in my town and while it was fun for the first few hours, it got really old by three o’clock in the morning. The alcohol helped me take a break from my problems, but it did not solve them. The next day everything was just like before.

This was not the first time I was so disappointed, and not the first time asking myself: “What is the meaning of my life?”  I did not have much hope in myself.  Even though my strength was in math and logic, it was pointless – my grammar was terrible. I made mistakes all the time. And it didn’t matter how hard I tried to help others and be friendly. It seemed all I did was cause conflicts and misunderstandings.

I did not understand what was wrong with me. It seemed that everyone was making it in life, but not me. Life was great for others, but not for me.

I’m still amazed that I finished high school and got into university. At the end of September of my first year, my roommate invited me to a party.  I thought, “I’ve been in Riga a month already and haven’t partied? This is a must!”  But this party was much different than the others before. Zero alcohol and zero boring. Time flew by so quickly and soon I needed to say good-bye to my new friends. “Why they are so friendly?” I kept thinking.  Not long after I found out why.   They were Christians. “OK,” I thought, “that explains it.  But too bad I will never be like them.”  You see, since childhood I thought that if there is a God, then I have to earn His love. To be a “good kid” was just as impossible as writing something without mistakes. There’s not much you can do with two older trouble-making brothers and busy parents.

I was confident that this too would be one of my many disappointments. But I didn’t object when a girl named Erica offered to tell me more about God. She explained that God loved me and wanted to have a personal relationship with me, and how that was even possible. It sounded good…actually really good, but I did not believe that God could love me and this theory seemed too unrealistic.  I thought to myself, “Jesus dying on a cross for my sin (bad deeds, words, thoughts) and then rising from the dead? Come on! Where is the logic in that? And you base this on 2000 year old information from the Bible?”

But as I got to know them better, I understood that this was not just “some theory” for them.  A personal relationship with God really had changed their lives.  None of them were perfect and yet…God was loving them.

So one night I sat down and asked myself, “So what about me?” I understood very clearly that without God, my life would stay the same as it was. But with Him it might be different. So I did something I thought irrational…I asked God to forgive my sins and to come into my life and change it.

It took a while to understand that the hole in my heart was actually a deep longing to be accepted for who I was and that only a real relationship with God and others could fill up the emptiness.

To be in relationship – that is the meaning of life.

P.S. If you want to know what Erica told me just click on “Learn more about Jesus”