Tag: Identity

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Faith Life

Y Is For: You Is A Plural Word

Some believe it is only GREAT POWER that can hold evil in check. But that is not what I have found. I have found that it is the small every day deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay, small acts of kindness and love. ~ Gandalf

sequoia sunset

The world is a mess, and you are the answer, but you are not the answer alone. English translations obscure this truth: the “you” of the Bible is plural.

God knows, one person, pious and gentle, will not make the world gasp in wonder. But together we become a blazing light, where every glimmer matters.

“Christ has no body now, but yours.
No hands, no feet on earth, but yours.
Yours are the eyes through which
Christ looks compassion into the world.
Yours are the feet
with which Christ walks to do good.
Yours are the hands
with which Christ blesses the world,” Teresa of Avila claimed.

But “yours” means “ours” in a way many of us find uncomfortable.

You implies a new identity

I am an American, white female, introvert, scholar, wife, parent, grandparent. I have political preferences and inherited biases, but in Christ, I die to them all. My new identity trumps every other, and at the same time redeems each one.

God knows, our nation needs more citizens  who are Christ-followers first, who bow to no party but his. God knows, we need more open-armed mothers, able to hug all children close. God knows, this broken world will be mended when his church abandons its rights, and takes up the cross–the self-forgetting, other-embracing, joy-filled way of Christ.

Not only on our own, but together.

Matthew 5:13-15;  Philippians 2:15; Colossians 3:1-4; 1 Peter 2:9

Where have you been Christ’s hands and feet, together?

 

In our series, An Alphabet Adagio, we are savoring the story of the Bible, our story, alphabetically. Next week: Z Is For Zoe: Live The End Of The Story.

Photograph by Melanie Hunt
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Faith Life

Finding Your Life, Unexpected

An identity grounded in God would mean that when we think of who we are, the first thing that would come to mind is our status as someone who is deeply loved by God. ~ David Benner

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The journey to knowing God and knowing self follows the same, often arduous path. We don’t find one without the other.

But the lie we stumble over on the way is a potent one: Life is a self-design. You are the meaning of your own being.

I am my life. I decide who I am. I work alone.

We craft our image, composing a self, preening in the mirror of our choosing. The dressing room is littered with effort, outfits tried and found wanting. Accessories scatter as we pick through the bin to find something

  • original, yet acceptable,
  • charming, yet purposeful,
  • cute, yet calculating.

We have goals to achieve, worlds to conquer, and crowds to impress…and so little time.

We are gladiators in the cruel arena of validation. Every moment we must justify the air we breath, our place on the planet, our position in the pecking order.

And we count and hoard the treasure of every “like” we can get, every evite to the party, every plaque on the wall. We fortify our defenses against the constant threat of nobody-ness.

I am my life. I thought I knew who I was. Why do I feel so alone?

Ah, but you are not your life. Your life is bound up in another. Crafted, yes, but not by your design. Life is not something to be made, but found in relationship with the Maker.

I fought in the validation arena. I learned to pose and posture so only the parts I was proud of showed. Everyone became a threat to the dazzling image I had in mind. Every failure was a fatal blow. The applause was never loud enough, my accomplishments were always eclipsed by more-talented others. The world orbited around me as I labored to create my own worth out of any material at hand.

Until, one evening I died. Standing in the moonlight on a bike path near my home, I surrendered all and felt no loss, just oddly free.

God is my life. He knows who I am, and he made a way for me to be found.

Galatians 2:20

Are you trying to make, or learning to find your life?

 

You may like: The Ultimate Identity Theft and God Wants To Make You Real.

 

 

 

 

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Faith Life

Identity With An Expiration Date

Jesus knew who he was before God and in God. He could therefore resist the temptations to live his life out of a false center based on possessions, actions or the esteem of others. ~David G. Benner

fireman dog

Mistaken Identity:

  • The poses I practice.
  • The costumes I wear.
  • The posturing that earns me the right to breath air.

False Identity:

  • What I have.
  • What I do.
  • What people think of me.

Our identities are always in crisis because the false ones come with an expiration date.

The Identity Bin

A circle’s worth of children sit cross-legged on the floor. As I, the music teacher, hand out rhythm instruments from the plastic bin, their eyes plead,

Please give me claves or castanets! Darn, boring old rhythm sticks again. How will I stand out? I can’t compete with the cabasa’s scritchy sounds. I could be something special with maracas in my hand. The teacher must like me least of all.

The music begins. The students bang their instruments as loud as they can and eye each other with envy. But at the end of the song, the instruments go back in the bin.

Exactly The Point

the Apostle Paul’s makes in 1 Corinthians 13: 8: “Hey guys, you know those spectacular spiritual gifts that have you preening in the mirror, or hanging your head in resentment? They will all go back in the bin!”

What brings us applause and approval today will share the fate of quill pens tomorrow. When Christ returns, they get tossed in the bin–no one will need them, no one will care.

  • Who needs prophetic sermons, when the sound of God’s voice fills the air?
  • Who needs scholarly expertise when God himself can be asked?
  • Who needs mountain-moving faith when the mountains have been moved for good?

Are you building your identity and sense of worth on the temporary gifts of today? Forget your clever cabasa and your clanging cowbell. Start over-performing in what matters.

The Only Identity That Lasts

And so I return again to knowing myself as deeply loved by God. I meditate on his love, allowing my focus to be on him and his love for me, not me and my love for him.

And slowly things begin to change. My heart slowly begins to warm and soften. I begin to experience new levels of love for God. And slowly, almost imperceptibly, I begin to see others through God’s eyes of love.

David G. Benner in, Sacred Companions 

Have you forgotten the gifts you envy or admire will expire? 

This is post fifteen of our Lent To Love: A Return to the Source series on 1 Corinthians 13. Join us on the journey to Easter!

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