Joseph Ferdinand Cheval walked the same twenty-mile loop every day, delivering mail to his neighbors in rural France. It was the 1860s, and this was his permanent lot in life.
His only connection to the outside world was the postcards he delivered with strange drawings of far-flung countries. So, he walked. And walked. And walked.
And as he walked, he thought. Cheval later wrote,
What is a man to do when walking across country by himself but to cogitate about anything and everything? ... To divert my mind, I used to construct in a dream a fairy palace... with gardens, grottoes, towers, castles, museums, and sculptures. … I told no one about it for fear of being ridiculed, and I felt ridiculous myself.
Fifteen years passed, and his dream kingdom faded from his mind. Until he tripped.
The dirt road always had hazards, but this particular piece of sandstone escaped his vision and sent him tumbling. Irritated, he dug it up and ripped it from the ground. Road repair complete.
But for some strange reason, he kept the rock. The next day, he found another like it. Day after day, he dug them up and put them in his pockets until he needed a wheelbarrow to carry his daily load back home.
As he pushed the barrow, his old visions returned to him. He felt as if nature was summoning him to build something.
And so, he did. For 33 years, he spent 93,000 hours by lamplight in his backyard binding lime, cement, and his rocks together to build Le Palais Ideal, The Ideal Palace.
It’s a remarkable structure. Intricate. Detailed. Strange. Mythological figures danced with animals and vines. There were spires and spiral staircases. The final palace was 85 feet long and 33 feet wide. No piece of its surface lacks ornamentation and detail.
He had turned his life as a rural mailman into something extraordinary. He became the architect, mason, and sculptor of an unimaginable castle. Where others would have found only drudgery and repetition, he found purpose and beauty.
Who can’t relate to Cheval?
You may not be a mailman, but you do know the drudgery of daily life and perhaps have dabbled with all the toys we use to make it bearable: entertainment, vacations, alcohol, smartphones.
We work for the weekend because the weekdays are always more of the same.
But at some point, you realize that “the weekend,” whatever it may be for you, is not enough.
You need a deeper well than Netflix and parties, and eating out. You need purpose. You need some overarching direction for life that makes even the drudgery of the everyday meaningful—beautiful even.
The first time you feel that, it’s something like tripping on a rock.
It’s not relieving so much as inconvenient. Irritating. Because you’ve seen that whatever the world offers, be it the American dream or some other dream, is not enough.
But if it’s not enough, then what is? You slide the rock in your pocket, and it grates against you. If you’re wise, you don’t want to let it go.
This moment comes at different times for different people. Some trip in their teens. Others in their sixties. But it is unavoidable. Even if you choose to ignore it, other rocks will peek out of the dirt and repeat the trick.
Eventually, we all must sit with the question: What is the purpose of my life? Is there something more than this same road I travel every day? Is there a palace to build?
When we speak about our “conversion” or “coming to faith,” we mean to pinpoint the moment we believed in Jesus as our savior from sin.
These are important stories—some exciting and some quite ordinary—but our obsession with a single moment can obscure a deeper reality.
Life is full of conversions.
Our journey with Jesus may begin at a particular point, but it doesn’t end there.
The path branches and diverts again and again. Choices layer on choices, and as years turn into decades, you turn into someone who, if you’re being honest, doesn’t resemble the someone you were a decade ago.
This is why lifetime followers of Jesus can find him anew. We think to ourselves, “Maybe it wasn’t real before.” But that misses the point.
It was as real as it could be. But now it is more real.
One such conversion every Christian must undergo is a conversion of purpose. It’s the juncture at which we realize two things: the purpose I inherited from the world is a husk, and the purpose of Jesus is an ocean.
Seeing this is terrifying, because the husk, for all its emptiness, is comfortable. Safe. Ordinary.
Leaving it behind is no easy task. But it is a necessary one if we want to stop tripping and start living.
There is a palace for you to build on your daily rounds. Your twenty miles a day do serve a purpose deeper and wider than the vastest sea. The question is whether you can see it, and more importantly, whether you live for it.
Jesus didn’t come merely as a wise teacher or miracle worker. He came as the cosmic Lord of the universe, who made all things, knows all things, and holds all things together.
Jesus made you on purpose for a purpose.
You will never be satisfied until you know the purpose for which you were purposefully made.
To that end, we will spend this semester exploring what it means to live with purpose—learning how to see the purpose God’s set before you, and then, stone by stone, block by block, building the palace he purposed you to build.
So, let’s dig up the rocks that cross our paths. Pile them into the wheelbarrow and give them to Jesus. See what he can do with them by his grace, and what strange, beautiful things might emerge by the lantern light of his love.
Don't just build anything this fall. Build something that lasts. Build community. Discover opportunities to get involved this fall at The Crossing.