The words of John Milton, Book XII of Paradise Lost, written in the 1660s-70s and still the best answer I can find to Rick Warren’s challenge to formulate a life purpose statement.
When I read or recite this, I feel intensely glad to be who I am, in this age and in this place, yet so appreciative of my forebears. I know that the things I love best about being English are Gospel things – ‘by small | Accomplishing great things’ – and that a life lived ‘as in His presence’ is a life of significance and purpose whether joyful, sad, achieving or resting.
And I know this because I have His example – the same Redeemer a blind Puritan Poet four hundred years my senior knew.