Anointing

Where the Question First Awoke

 

The question began in my mother’s heart

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It was the early 1990s in Moscow. My mother was in her forties, working full time, carrying responsibility, and outwardly managing life as it came. One day, she and a close friend decided to take a walk through a large cemetery—not for mourning, but for reflection. The cemetery held the graves of well-known figures: professors, academics, military commanders, artists, politicians. Their monuments were carefully crafted, their names once respected. Nearby were the graves of ordinary people, marked simply and quietly.

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They stopped often to read the inscriptions. Dates of birth and death followed the same pattern, regardless of achievement. Standing there, surrounded by rows of names that once carried weight, a question formed in my mother’s mind with unusual clarity: What difference does it make? However different their lives had been, all had arrived at the same place. No reputation followed them. No accomplishment altered the outcome.

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She did not feel bitterness in that moment—only a sober unease. Life seemed active, demanding, and full, yet its end appeared to flatten everything. That walk did not give her answers, but it awakened a question that would not leave her: If this is where every path ends, what is the purpose of living at all?

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Ecclesiastes named the ache

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Not long after that walk, my mother encountered the book of Ecclesiastes. She did not approach it as religious literature or philosophy. She read it because its tone matched what she was already feeling. The words did not argue with her questions—they articulated them.

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When she read, “The greatest futility! Everything is futile!” it did not shock her. It felt familiar. Solomon did not dismiss work, wisdom, or achievement; he examined them carefully and still concluded that none of them prevented the same ending. The repetition of “no lasting memory” struck her deeply. It mirrored exactly what she had seen in the cemetery: names once honored, now silent.

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What affected her most was not Solomon’s honesty about death, but his refusal to soften it. Humans and animals returning to dust. Wisdom unable to secure permanence. Labor unable to preserve meaning. These were not abstract thoughts to her; they described the rhythm of real life she was watching around her.

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Ecclesiastes did not yet give her hope. But it gave legitimacy to her unease. It confirmed that the question she carried was not shallow or cynical. It was ancient, serious, and worth answering.

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The ransom gave the ache a direction

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Ecclesiastes named the problem, but it did not explain how it could be resolved. It described the cycle clearly—work, wisdom, birth, death—but it did not offer a way beyond it. That is where my mother’s search continued.

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When she encountered the Bible’s teaching about the ransom, something changed—not emotionally at first, but logically. The ransom did not deny Solomon’s observations; it answered them. Death was not minimized. Futility was not ignored. Instead, both were acknowledged as real consequences of something that had gone wrong, not as the natural endpoint of human existence.

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What stood out to her was that the ransom addressed the problem at its root. If death was the common outcome for all, then the solution could not be individual achievement or moral effort. It had to be something larger—something capable of reversing the condition shared by all humanity. The ransom presented that reversal as purposeful, intentional, and universal in scope.

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For the first time, the question of purpose was no longer abstract. Life was not simply meaningful because it was lived well; it was meaningful because it was meant to continue. The ache Solomon described was no longer a closed loop—it had an opening.

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This did not yet answer every question, but it changed the direction of the search. Life was no longer viewed as a temporary assignment ending in silence, but as part of a design that had been interrupted and was now being restored.

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1999: “How Purposeful Is Your Life?”—assigned before I felt ready

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In 1999, during the Ministerial Training School in St. Petersburg, I was assigned a public talk titled “How Purposeful Is Your Life?” The audience was not a local congregation but a hall filled with experienced elders, circuit overseers, and district overseers—men whose speaking ability and spiritual maturity I respected deeply.

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At that time, I was a ministerial servant. I was active, experienced in local preaching and teaching, and accustomed to regular public talks in congregations. Still, this assignment felt premature. I did not question the topic, but I questioned myself. Standing before that audience, I was conscious not of authority, but of limitation.

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I delivered the talk, and afterward received thoughtful, constructive counsel from Brother Pavel Bugaysky. His advice was practical and kind, and I applied it carefully. A second opportunity followed—this time in the Bethel auditorium, before an even broader and more prominent audience.

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Objectively, the talks were acceptable. Subjectively, I felt they fell short of what the moment required. I sensed the distance between understanding a subject and fully embodying it. I knew how to speak about purpose; I was still learning how deeply it governed my own life.

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Yet something else was unmistakable. I did not feel like an outsider in Bethel. I felt at home—not because of position, but because of belonging. I did not feel that Bethel belonged to others and not to me. At the same time, I knew I was not ready for that platform. That tension stayed with me.

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One comment from a sister remains vivid even now. She referenced Psalm 45: “My heart is stirred by something good. I say: ‘My song is about a king.’ May my tongue be the stylus of a skilled copyist. You are the most handsome of the sons of men. Gracious speech flows from your lips. That is why God has blessed you forever." It was not flattery. It confirmed something I had always pursued—to use God’s Word in a way that reaches hearts, not to draw attention to myself.

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Looking back, I do not interpret that assignment as confirmation of office or calling. I see it as exposure—being placed briefly where my depth was tested before it was complete. It left a mark, not because I succeeded, but because I recognized the difference between ability and readiness.

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That experience fixed something in me: purpose is not something we announce; it is something that gradually takes hold of us.

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The covenants: one purpose, one line of movement

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During that same training period, another discussion quietly anchored what had been forming in me. Brother Pavel walked us through the seven covenants that run through Scripture:

• the covenant with Noah

• the covenant with Abraham

• the covenant with Israel through Moses

• the covenant with David

• the covenant connected with Melchizedek

• the new covenant with the Israel of God

• and the Kingdom covenant Jesus made with his apostles

When viewed separately, these covenants can appear to point in different directions. But when viewed together, they form a single line of movement—Jehovah’s purpose unfolding steadily toward the restoration of life on the earth.

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What struck me then, and has stayed with me since, is that none of these covenants exist in isolation. Each builds on the previous one. Each narrows focus without abandoning the original intention. Together, they do not pull attention away from the earth; they secure it.

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At one point, Brother Pavel made an observation that stayed with me: those in Christendom who speak about going to heaven often have no real understanding of the final two covenants. At the time, I understood that simply. If someone desires heaven but has no concern for preparing the earth for restoration—no interest in helping humanity overcome sin, death, and imperfection—then they cannot meaningfully participate in covenants whose purpose is to unite heaven and earth.

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Years later, I see that point more clearly. The new covenant and the Kingdom covenant are not about escape from the earth. They exist to ensure that Jehovah’s original purpose for the earth is fulfilled, not replaced.

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Brother Pavel closed that discussion by reading words from Paul that have echoed in my mind ever since: “I pray that he may grant you through the abundance of his glory to be made mighty in the man you are inside, with power through his spirit, and that through your faith you may have the Christ dwell in your hearts with love. May you be rooted and established on the foundation, in order that with all the holy ones you may be thoroughly able to comprehend fully what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of the Christ, which surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness that God gives.” 

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I was not thinking about anointing then. I was thinking about purpose—how broad it is, how deep it is, and how much larger it is than any single role.

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That is why, even now, I do not separate anointing from Jehovah’s purpose for the earth. When I read “one hope,” I mean it—not as a slogan, but as a unified direction in which Jehovah is moving heaven and earth together.

Anointing, in this light, is not a departure from that hope. It is a way Jehovah serves it.

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