Did you know that instinct plus purpose equals destiny? Let me share this encounter with you. As I quietly stepped onto the elevator and gently pushed the “L” button to return to the lobby, the incredible blessing I’d just experienced held me spellbound.
On the elevator ride down, I pondered the glimpse into history just shared with me by the legendary Mrs. Coretta Scott King during her last days of health and vitality.
We had enjoyed a lunch in her elegant Atlanta penthouse suite, where she lived during her elder years with dignity and class.
As we dined, Mrs. King retold many of her amazing experiences from the bird’s-eye perspective of her deepest reflections.
The memories she shared were moments I had witnessed only through newsreels and history books.
She guided me down a hallway decorated with gripping images reflecting a life on the edge of death, yet illuminated by passion and conviction. She shared what it was like during her years with the Rewerend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, American popular activist, including many moments of peril.
As she recalled heart-wrenching experience, she spoke with the compassion of a mother-somehow, everyone’s mother-and not just the mother of her four enigmatic, intriguing progeny.
One of the many topics we discussed that day was a piercing question I posed, a subject considered taboo by many.
I asked her why she never remarried. Before responding, she looked at me as if my question was actually rather foolish.
Mrs. King smiled and almost giggled when she responded, “Martin was a tough act to follow.” Indeed he must have been.
Few men have ever affected the culture, the country, and the world as Dr. King did. But what she said next took my breath away. “I was called to be his wife.” she said. “It was my destiny to stand beside him.”
This woman, whose legendary singing voice merited a career of its own, whose speaking skills and intellect qualified her for many roles, clearly perceived her destiny.
Mrs. King could have been anything she wanted—-from university president to entrepreneur—yet she chose to support the civil rights movement, underscoring the mission and keeping alive the dream of her martyred husband!
She shared so many experiences about her life, little did I realize she actually was reflecting on them from the posture of her imminent demise.
Only in retrospect did I consider her small plate of slowly consumed fruits, and her contentment watching me enjoy the ample offering of culinary delights prepared for me.
Her contented smile betrayed the gravity of her condition, which I knew to be a battle with cancer, and one she would shortly lose. Or did she really lose at all?
Her smile taught me the value of contentment with a life well lived, a life that had run its course.
Coretta Scott King lived comforted by her belief that despite the turbulence of her journey, she had lived on course with a destiny far more important than the waves of grief and tumult she experienced in the life and in the murder of her husband. She was at peace!
With that said, if only you and I could replicate her resolve in our own lives. Could it be that we allow the conditions in our lives to distract us from the meaning of our lives?
Is it possible that we don’t spend enough time checking the dials and reading the compass of Destiny and its intrinsic pull on the human soul?
If we are wise we will see the predestined purpose we were created for and, in our brief life span, find it and do it.
It is my hope that each of us will be free from the purposeless living that causes so many to stumble aimlessly through life.
Like Mrs. King, we all were created to fulfill some role only through which we can find the great elixir of contentment and courage.
Whatever the assignment, death loses its license to threaten those who are certain we have lived before we face its clutching grasp.
As the elevator descended the thirty-nine stories to the lobby, I reflected on the fact that I, too, have lived a life to which I felt drawn.
I have been pulled by a call that has drawn me from the mundane acquisition of life’s mementos to the far more rewarding task of doing something with my life that only I could uniquely accomplish.
Did You Know That Instinct Plus Purpose Equals Destiny? Share your thought below…
