THE CHRIST-CENTERED LIVING = Part I: THE SEARCH FOR LIFE CORE

By: Peregrino “Jun” Velasco Taccad, Jr.
            
To live meaningfully and orderly a person must choose an area in his life and set it as the main reason for his existence.  We will call this “Life Core”, an element in one’s life that directs him toward an intended destiny.    In the absence of Life Core, people tend to live an undirected and scattered lifestyle.  It usually comes in the form of “Personal Mission Statement”, just as Stephen Covey called it.  He said that if you set a Personal Mission Statement and strive hard to live by it, you will most likely enjoy effective and productive life.  

Outdoors, diffused sunrays obviously cannot produce enough heat to burn a piece of paper unless you take a magnifying glass and create concentrated sun beam out of it.  If you put the paper under that beam, you have more than sufficient heat to ignite and eventually consume the paper.  The sunlight represents our diffused, scattered way of living.  Unless we learn how to use a systematic approach to put all life aspects together and aim it at only one life core, we can never achieve the so-called “life to the full”.
 
Don’t you know that the core is usually where the energy is coming from?  In our solar system, the main source of energy comes from the core of the sun, where massive aggressive atomic reactions are continuously taking place.  The sun holds all planets in their axis so they neatly move around it.  The sun is at the center, hence the core that manipulates the movements of the entire solar family.  Take the smallest particle of a matter, atom.  The atom has a core called nucleus where electrons, protons and neutrons are orderly revolving around. Any sub-atomic particles which comes in contact with the nucleus produces changes, thus producing so-called nuclear reaction which in turn causes energy to be released.  The nucleus, as the core, produces atomic energy which is very useful in our existence.

Another, our very own Earth Core produces extreme heat energy, such heat that holds the possibility of life in this planet.  I must know that God designed it that energy should indeed come out from the core of everything, the same way that life was designed by God to be energized and held together by a Life Core.

Few examples of areas that may serve as life core are; someone you love most, marriage, professional career, family, business, social causes and religious missions. Life Core transcends as we pass through life’s stages.  Children are not expected to set their life core but naturally they fixate themselves to only loving their parents.  As they grow older, they then feel the need to build own career in order to attain independence. After that, they enter into intimate relationships which makes them divert their life core from career to relationships, and eventually, to getting married.  After marriage, they will then focus on establishing family and all their plans and actions are geared toward nurturing children and spouse. After attaining all these life cores, a person will then realize that there are things in this life which are far more important than just mere physical existence, things that are greater than themselves.  Raising a family is not really the ultimate one that actualized a man, so the search for true Life Core does not end there.

Before I post the next part of this article, you may need to do some reflection first.   Take a pen and paper.   Write your answers to the following questions:

1)     At present, am I living a diffused and undirected life that it is imperative for me to immediately identify a Life Core? 

2)      Or, If I claim to be living a directed life at present, what orchestrates all my mindsets, principles, intentions, decisions and actions. (what’s my Life Core)?

3)     If my answer to the preceding question is “YES”, what primarily do I live for that can be set as my Life Core? 

4)     How does this Life Core affect the following aspects of my life?

ü  Physical
ü  Emotional
ü  Family (Wife, Husband, Children, Siblings and Parents)
ü  Social Relationship: friends, co-workers, acquaintances and society at large
ü  Job/Profession or Studies
ü  Spiritual Life

5)       Besides this Life Core, am I still searching for something else that I think can fully actualize my life?  What is it?

 Assignment:   Read the entire book of ECCLESIATES from the Bible.