Hi ,
Who are you?
I'm
as serious as I know how to be when I ask that question.
Who are you?
Who are you...really?
When you ponder that potent question, it can cause some mental wheels to turn. I've sat and thought about this topic, and I could almost detect the scent of burning rubber as my mental "wheels" went into motion.
So much of who we "think" we are as individuals is tainted, textured, and colored by the world around us.
Who we spend our time with, what we look at, and what we listen to all play an important role in who we "think" we are.
Case in point: Leisure suits.
If you lived as a teen (or an adult) through the
'70s, you know EXACTLY what I'm talking. If you didn't, please see the picture of the two young men looking "cool" in the catalog page that I've included with this post. Polyester, Captain Kangaroo pockets, large buttons...what's NOT to love?
I have at least one picture of me in a leisure suit that I can think of. It's somewhere in a
drawer at my mother's home, and I would be delighted if it never surfaced and was shown to anyone. It was an unattractive dark green thing with prominent white stitching. I wore it regularly, and was fully convinced that I looked amazing in it. The platform shoes that I wore with this hideous get-up seemed pretty cool as well—at least they did back then.
What was I thinking?
I was taking fashion "cues" from everyone else around me, and it's clear to me now that who I really was, and who I THOUGHT I was were probably vastly different.
It
still happens today.
Look around, and you'll see people everywhere taking their life-cues from others that they hang out with, see, or listen to.
Who are you? Who are you REALLY?
I would submit that who we are REALLY are can never fully be realized until we know who we are IN Christ. Until we recognize what HE sees when He looks at us, we spend most of our lives flailing around trying "to find ourselves."
I wonder if any of us can EVER know who we really are until we know what our Creator feels about us! The following group of verses is rather lengthy, but I hope you'll read it and ask yourself, "Who am I...REALLY?"
You have searched me, Lord,
and you
know me.
You know when I sit and when I rise;
you perceive my thoughts from afar.
You discern my going out and my lying down;
you are familiar with all my
ways.
Before a word is on my tongue
you, Lord, know it completely.
You hem me in behind and before,
and you lay your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
too lofty for me to attain.
Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.
If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me
and the light become night around me,”
even the darkness will not be dark to you;
the night will shine like the day,
for darkness is as light to you.
For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed body;
all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be. Psalm 139:1-16
Who I THINK I am is certainly important, but who I ACTUALLY am in God's eyes makes a profound
difference in who I can be.