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Franklin Cobos

Man on a Mission

It's nice to be back here in Iowa City, which is not my home for those of you who don't know me or have just seen me for the first time.

I work at University Hospital for the summer and into the fall, and I have returned from a mission.

I was in Zambia and Malawi for much of the past 2 months.

And Pastor Morrison asked me if I would speak on some of my experiences and what I did and to share the stories and talk about these things.

But before I do talk about those things, and I will, we need to cover what it means to have a mission.

You know, I like to start with definitions.

So I want to define for you what a mission is.

Which completes a task or fulfills a goal.

You'll find that taking mission trips is popular now and again.

It kind of comes in these waves and periods of people in college or high school that associate and plan these mission trips.

Most of them in my humble opinion are not mission trips.

You see a pilgrimage is an ill-defined, much more open-ended event.

It's someone who does not really belong and they seek a further sense of their identity and purpose.

And they expect and hope to find within that travel or trip the purpose and identity which they now lack.

Or hopefully maybe just because they're traveling they'll kind of stumble onto something during their journey.

So do you understand the difference or distinction that I would draw out between those 2 this morning.

Not that I haven't been on a pilgrimage, I've been on pilgrimages.

But I have returned from a mission and now I understand more fully the difference between the 2.

It's only when you've done something that you really understand it.

So I ask you this morning, do you have a mission, or are you merely a pilgrim?

There's a song, maybe you've sung it, it's a hymn.

You know, that person doesn't have a mission.

But they don't have a mission, and that's different.

So, in a broader sense, let me ask, what is your mission in life?

Last weekend I was at Cedar Rapids and they had this graduation ceremony.

I've been to a few myself, more than I care to have attended.

And there's usually all this pontification about go out into life and dreams and goals and we've equipped you and we're so proud of you and we are and we are equipped.

But no 1 as yet that I've ever been to any graduation, any of my own, college, high school, grade school, med school, all those graduations I've had, no 1 has told me how to identify my mission.

In fact, I'm convinced most people don't know how.

They just kind of, you know, they teach you reading, writing, and arithmetic, and that's good enough, isn't it?

You know, people meander around through life, they have midlife crises, they, you know, men typically will divorce at 40 and cash in for 220s, and they change jobs and buy sports cars, and they have no idea what they're doing in life.

They happen to be quite successful, but not either happy or fulfilled.

I didn't hear much about that last weekend, so I thought I would incorporate it into this week's talk.

And how is it that you can know for certain what your mission or life's purpose really is?

Well I would define life's mission a little bit more deeply than just mission.

Well, life's mission I would describe as the 1 overarching method by which you meet all of your individual goals in life.

And it's done in a manner which can only be done by you.

And no 1 else, anywhere else in the world.

A method by which you reach all your individual goals.

Have you ever accomplished something which simultaneously solved multiple problems that you were facing in life?

Where everything else was kind of done for you.

Where you addressed 1 problem, then suddenly all the other things kind of took care of themselves.

Say you, for example, got a higher paying, more enjoyable job, working fewer hours, that accomplished the goals of paying off school debt, reducing your stress, getting more sleep, and improving your health.

It gave you time to go to church regularly on the weekends because you're not doing weekend or night call.

Spend time with family and friends, which fosters your social and spiritual well-being.

You accomplish 1 thing and then everything else automatically and simultaneously is handled.

It's kind of like, have you ever seen, you know what a Rube Goldberg device is?

Do you ever seen the pictures or drawings of like, it's actually, The game Mousetrap, have you ever played that when you were kids?

That is a Rube Goldberg device, where you set 1 thing in motion, and then there's this chain of events that happens somewhat precariously, But very accurately and perfectly timed, and all these things just work out.

And so that's kind of what life's mission is.

If you do 1 thing, everything else, it's like a domino effect, in a sense.

1 of the more recent illustrations I've seen of that visually was, I think it was, it won an award, it was a commercial by Honda.

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Man on a Mission

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