We are surrounded daily in a torrent of social and cultural downpour. Each drop is a reminder that the things we thirst for are rarely answered by the things present to us. Food, work, sex, success, money- each of them tell us a little, but none of them answer the one question. We learn quickly enough that the external world has only the markers of what we are looking for, but not the substance itself.
So we look to people. Relationships make us see both the world and ourselves in a new light. They can challenge, strain and encourage us. They light up more of the path, but they don't bring us to the destination of journey. Good as they can be, friends, and even family, reflect something of our hopes, but are not themselves the erudite object of our desire.
We turn inward. We've heard it said that it is the "character" of a person that makes them what they are. But if this is true, our humanity is perhaps our most broken recommendation to our own inner consolation. We fail. Even ourselves. People who take themselves seriously, and honestly, often ultimately come to the conclusion that Paul of Tarsus once did, "what a wretched man I am!"
If we can't look to the world, we can't gain our ultimate life from relationships, and we can't base our value on ourselves, what is this ultimate quest we are trying to achieve?
Just this- that the core of our worth only comes when we can find an answer to this single question:
who am I?
The one answer I've found that has has never failed is this:
I am God's child.
The simplicity of this will always be used as a taunt by the imagination to ignore it or make light of it. For good reason- it places the entire weight of our lives, our relationships, and indeed the entire world, on the words of a single man. Jesus of Nazareth.
Some two thousand years ago, the person of Jesus declared with unequivocal clarity that your value and worth as a human being rests soley in the evaluation of God. And that God has chosen not only to call you friend, but to call you sons and daughters.
You being God's child means that the treasures of the whole universe can be lost to you, and you are still richer.
You being God's child means that even if friends and family fail and desert you, He doesn't.
You being God's child means that your own character failures, personal regrets and most terrible sins are swallowed up by his overwhelming ocean of love.
Who are you? You are His.
And when you are His, even your own conscience and internal voice are not the guides to truth- He is. And he is both perfect truth and perfect love.
Who are you?
You are God's child.