Who Are You?

I wonder if one of the reasons why we settle for the status quo, even when it comes to our "calling" is for fear of what it will mean for us. What will I have to let go of?

I love what Parker Palmer says in response to this.

He says that vocation does not come from a voice “out there” calling me to become something I am not. It comes from a voice “in here” calling me to be the person I was born to be, to fulfill the original selfhood given at my birth by God.

It’s a strange gift, this birthright of self. Accepting it turns out to be even more demanding than attempting to become someone else! I have sometimes responded to that demand by ignoring the gift, or hiding it, or fleeing from it, or squandering it – and I think I am not alone. There is a Hasidic tale that reveals, with amazing brevity, both the universal tendency to want to be someone else and the ultimate importance of becoming one’s self: Rabbi Zusya, when he was an old man, said, ‘In the coming world, they will not ask me: ‘Why were you not Moses?’ They will ask me; ‘Why were you not Zusya?’

It is so true that we cannot discover our true selves without Christ. We only discover who we really are in light of who we are in relationship to Him. And what He says about us. Who He says we are.