Good morning…
As I flipped through my stack of favorite books for yesterday’s post, I found my way back to two pages I love. The story of a tulip encourages us as we wait beneath the dark soil of not seeing, not knowing, not understanding exactly what God is growing in us. The beauty of spring popping in every direction reminds us of God’s unstoppable promise, “Before I made you in your mother’s womb, I knew you. Before you were born, I chose you for a special work” (Jeremiah 1:5a, ERV).
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Excerpt from The Gift Of Being Yourself: The Sacred Call To Self-Discovery by David G. Benner
In all of creation, identity is a challenge only for humans. A tulip knows exactly what it is. It is never tempted by false ways of being. Nor does it face complicated decisions in the process of being. So it is with dogs, rocks, stars, amoebas, electrons and all other things. All give glory to God by being exactly what they are. For in being what God means them to be, they are obeying him. Humans, however, encounter a more challenging existence. We think. We consider options. We decide. We act. We doubt. Simple being is tremendously difficult to achieve and fully authentic being is extremely rare.
Body and soul contain thousands of possibilities out of which you can build many identities. But in only one of these will you find your true self that has been hidden in Christ from all eternity. Only in one will you discover your unique vocation and deepest fulfillment. But, as Dag Hammarskjold argues, you will never find this “until you have excluded all those superficial and fleeting possibilities of being and doing with which you toy out of curiosity or wonder or greed, and which hinder you from casting anchor in the experience of the mystery of life, and the consciousness of the talent entrusted to you which is your I.”
We all live searching for that one possible way of being that carries with it the gift of authenticity. We are most conscious of this search for identity during adolescence, when it takes front stage. At this stage of life we try on identities like clothing, looking for a style of being that fits with how we want to be seen. But even long after adolescence has passed, most adults know the occasional feeling of being a fraud – a sense of being not what they pretend to be but rather precisely what they pretend not to be. With a little reflection, must of us can become aware of the masks the we first adopt as strategies to avoid feelings of vulnerability but that have become a part of our social self. Tragically, we settle easily for pretense, and a truly authentic self often seems illusory.
There is, however, a way of being for each of us that is as natural and deeply congruent as the life of the tulip. Beneath the roles and masks likes a possibility of self that is as unique as a snowflake. It is an originality that has existed since God first loved us into existence. Our true self-in-Christ is the only self that will support authenticity. It and it alone provides an identity that is eternal.
Finding that unique self is, as noted by Thomas Merton, the problem on which all our existence, peace and happiness depend. Nothing is more important, for if we find our true self we find God, and if we find God, we find our most authentic self. (16-17)
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Our True Self is as natural and deeply congruent as the life of a tulip. The one-of-a-kind talent entrusted in us gradually grows into our genuine “I” as God loves us each into authentic existence for all eternity. Tragically, too often we settle for pretending, and our truly authentic self lies dormant, undiscovered.
But if God himself has taken up residence in your life, you can hardly be thinking more of yourself than of him. Anyone, of course, who has not welcomed this invisible but clearly present God, the Spirit of Christ, won’t know what we’re talking about. But for you who welcome him, in whom he dwells—even though you still experience all the limitations of sin—you yourself experience life on God’s terms. It stands to reason, doesn’t it, that if the alive-and-present God who raised Jesus from the dead moves into your life, he’ll do the same thing in you that he did in Jesus, bringing you alive to himself? When God lives and breathes in you (and he does, as surely as he did in Jesus), you are delivered from that dead life. With his Spirit living in you, your body will be as alive as Christ’s! (Romans 8:9-11, MSG).
…Sue…
