At bible study last evening we talked about:
Who Am I? (this is one I have been working on - as you know) One person suggested we think about the top 3 descriptive labels that pop into our mind when we consider the question Who Am I? Immediately: Child of God, Secondly: Servant of Jesus, Thirdly: Seeker. Interesting. It is as interesting to me the labels that popped into my head as much as the labels that did not. I keep pondering the Hindu meditation "Show me your face before your parents were born." Indeed Who Am I? Two questions that kept me up last night: Who would God say I am? Who would others say I am? What matters to me is not so much the actual answer - but do the answers align?
Next question: Whose Are You?
My Answer: God's.
Next question: How do you define yourself as a Christian? This time an answer does not come so quickly. Sometimes I really feel as though the label "Christian" has been hijacked. What Christian means in 2010 is not what it meant in Antioch in the first century.
"And it was in Antioch that the disciples were first called "Christians". Acts 11:26
Ask me how I define myself as a disciple and I can easily speak - ask me how I define myself as a Christian and I start to form a defense. I don't want it to be that way. I want to speak as a Christian as the desert fathers and mothers did, as people imbued with the Holy Spirit, knowing from where they came and where they were going and living that out as a Thanksgiving to God. We are back to the topic of radical transformation. I no longer care to live my life as if my Ego is all that I am. I no longer care to live my life according to the labels the World would have me embrace.
Casting Crowns wrote this great song: Until The Whole World Hears and it sums up a lot of what I feel in words better than I can give you:
"Lord I want to feel your heart,
and see the world through your eyes,
I want to be your hands and feet, I want to live a life that leads"
"and I pray that they will see
more of you and less of me
Lord I want my life to be the song You sing."
"Lord I want to feel your heart" - To feel God's heart - am I strong enough? Only through God's grace. Imagine God's heart, Agape - divine love. We are created out of divine love and then corrupted by the broken world. Imagine the compassion of the Divine for the Broken. "It was very good" (Genesis 1:31) was expelled from God's presence. Only through God's grace can we find our way back.
"See the world through your eyes" - Seeing with God's eyes demands you wake up! I can't sleep walk and daydream through this life and pretend to be unaware of the pain and suffering inflicted upon Creation by humankind. I am not God so I can not judge humankind, but seeing the World through God's eyes I can see more of the story, that behind the anger and the hurt and destruction is the broken and weary.
"I want to be your hands and feet" - Jesus is no longer physcially with us. His body had to be broken so that I might live. It was my own hands that broke him, my own feet that walked with him to the cross. He gave His life for me so that I might have life. The only loving response I can imagine is to surrender my life to him. I do not just want my hands and feet to be "busy" for God, "doing" for God. I want my hands and feet to be "being" for God.
"I want to live a life that leads" - I want to bring everyone with me. I want all of God's children to know and love God and to "go in peace to love and serve the Lord" (BCP pg 366) in their daily life. "Send them into the world in witness to your love. Bring them to the fullness of your peace and glory." (BCP 306 Holy Baptism)
"I pray they will see more of you and less of me" - this is part of my morning prayers. I begin with Thank You and I end with let them see more of you and less of me. For truly the more of the great I AM that is seen in my life the more "truth"fully I am seen.
"Lord I want my life to be the song you sing" -
"Then God said, "Let us make humankind in our image,
according to our likeness."
Genesis 1:26
and
"God blessed them"
Genesis 1:28
then
"God saw everything that he had made,
and indeed, it was very good."
Genesis 1:31
Creation by the Word of God - the Song of God.
Who Are You? Whose Are You? How do you define yourself and what does the song of your life sound like?
"Creating God, in you everything on earth and in the heavens
is bound together in perfect harmony."
(excerpt from The Web of Life adapted from the preamble of the Earth Charter a document of the ICCRE)
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