I often catch myself saying, “The beach is my happy place!”
And when I say that, I mean any beach shore—any body of water. But I prefer warm sunshine, velvet-soft sand, and gentle waves lapping the shore, not the windy, rocky coastline and pounding surf of the North Atlantic where I live.
For a long time, I thought of “finding my place” as a physical location. But one day, as I wrestled with my purpose while standing on a windswept, rugged shore, I felt the Lord nudge my heart: “I have positioned you here. You are deployed.”
The word deployed caught my attention. According to Merriam-Webster, deployment is “the placement or arrangement (as of military personnel or equipment) in position for a particular use or purpose.” Soldiers may have preferences about where they’d like to be stationed, but ultimately, their assignments are based on the needs of the mission.
Isn’t life like that? We have our own ideas of where we should be, but God places us where we need to be. And here’s the freeing yet challenging choice we all face: Will we spend our days longing for somewhere else, or will we fully embrace the mission in front of us? In God’s kingdom, purpose is greater than place.
Are we willing to redefine our happy place—not as a specific location, but as wherever God leads? Ephesians 2:7-10 (The Message paraphrase) says it beautifully: “Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.”
Welcome to your happy place. There is no better place to be than here and now in God’s will.
