By Jeff Price, Greenville, NC April 2003

I teach an adult Sunday School class at our church, and yesterday, my lesson was about finding the purpose in your life. I was talking about how everyone was created for a purpose, and how we can discover what ours is. My illustration was that Edison created/invented the phonograph, but unless he revealed it's purpose, it would have been very difficult, or even impossible, for most people to figure it out. Oh, some may have stumbled on it, but for the most part, it would have remained a mystery. So how do we know it's purpose. Well, because Edison told us. And at the time, if we were unclear, we could have asked him for clarification. Well it's just like that with people. If we want to discover our purpose in life, we just have to find out from the Inventor, or Creator, in our case. He has provided us with an owner's manual, the Bible. We can search the scriptures for answers to the meaning of life, and we can also seek the mind of God through prayer for answers on how to apply it to our lives. We can ask His guidance in finding our purpose, or reason for existence. The concept for the comparison came to me, and thanks to you, now whenever I think about an invention, the first one I think of is the phonograph.