Every morning my family reads a section from the Christian Science Bible lesson out loud before our son heads off to school.

One morning last week I was reading the Science and Health part of the section, and when I got done, realized I hadn’t paid attention to a single idea on the page. I read the words, very nicely I believe, but hadn’t gotten any significance out of them.

I jolted awake and rebuked my mental sleepiness with, “I read without meaning. That’s bad!”

It was a simple enough error to correct, but later I began to wonder how much of human life is lived without meaning in the same way.

Have you ever walked through your day going through the motions, fulfilling your appointed tasks, doing your designated jobs, smiling now and then, then came home, ate dinner, idled around, went to bed, and ended the day as if it didn’t really matter? And maybe not for a whole day, but for a portion of the day, when minutes and hours ticked away with no real meaning being felt and experienced? If so, this is what I mean by living without purpose. It’s like reading words without paying attention to their meaning. It becomes an empty task with no results to show afterward.

To experience the best life has to offer, we must live for a purpose. We need to find meaning in what we do, or more appropriately, live with meaning in the first place.

Life is God, very good, full of worth, value, purpose and significance. It is not experienced in mindless motion or empty acts. It is found in all of God’s creation, in the flowers and the trees, in a neighbor’s good acts and honest deeds. It is the spiritual goodness we live, the love we express, the joy we share. It’s an activity. And it requires mental participation on our part in the form of active thought, reason, query and questioning.

A computer switched to off is not going to do any computing.

God has designed Life to be progressive, positive, productive, brilliant, happy, healthy and purpose-filled. Life it accordingly!

Don’t let another minute go by without meaning.

Like reading words with interest to get their meaning, live life with interest to get its meaning and gain something worthwhile for the effort.