Remember Who You Are!
In the Gospel of Mark, 1:9-15, Jesus is baptized by John the Baptist. As Jesus comes up out of the water, the spirit of God descends on him like a dove and Jesus hears the words, “You are my beloved Son! In you, I am well pleased.”
It is at the launching of his ministry –the inauguration of his three year ministry that Jesus hears these words. This Lenten season is your invitation to begin again with God and hear God tell you who you are. Jesus knew who he was and yet his ministry begins with God affirming him. We find it easier to accept that God is speaking the truth when God speaks these words to Jesus. What is your reaction when you hear this truth concerning you? You are God’s beloved Son! You are God’s beloved daughter? Do these words ring true? For many of us, this truth causes great uneasiness and a shrinking back. For others, it is like a warm blanket—deeply comforting.
This season, you can choose to begin again by accepting this truth. God not only loves you, God calls you His beloved. You see its more than a fuzzy feeling. God words to Jesus conveys the message that Jesus is the servant sent by God, as promised by Isaiah. God sees and identifies Jesus as God’s own. Whether you feel like it or not, you are God’s own. Remember who you are!
God knows and redeems our deepest hopes and dreams!
The prophet Elisha in 2 Kings 4:8-37 asks the Shunnamite woman if there is anything that he and his servant can do for her to repay her for her kindness toward them. She replied, “Nothing. I’m secure and satisfied in my family.” And yet, when they saw that she had no children and Elisha told her that within a year she would have a son, she replied, “O my master, O Holy Man,” she said, “don’t play games with me, teasing me with such fantasies!”
The woman’s response reveals that even when she had given up hope in expecting a son, God knew one of her deepest hopes and needs. When we have let go, made peace with life as is, we are loved by God who knows and holds our deepest hopes.
Consideration: Where have you let go of hoping that something or situation might be different in your life?
God can do anything, you know—far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams! He does it not by pushing us around but by working within us, his Spirit deeply and gently within us. -Ephesians 3:20-21
All Scriptural References – The Message Bible
Go Back and Get “it”!
The Sankofa means in the Akan language of Ghana that it is not taboo to go back and get that which you have forgotten, or in English to “go back and get it”. Go back and get the wisdom, the strength, the promise that we may go forward. As we prepare to go into 2012, what is it that we need to go back and get?
What is the “Something”?
Nothing into Something
Oh yes, you shaped me first inside, then out;
you formed me in my mother’s womb.
I thank you, High God—you’re breathtaking!
Body and soul, I am marvelously made!
I worship in adoration—what a creation!
You know me inside and out,
you know every bone in my body;
You know exactly how I was made, bit by bit,
how I was sculpted from nothing into something.
Like an open book, you watched me grow from conception to birth;
all the stages of my life were spread out before you,
The days of my life all prepared
before I’d even lived one day. – Psalm 139:13-16 (The Message)
You were sculpted from nothing into something! The NIV Translation reads, “When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body.”
Recently I rediscovered how much I love painting. I love the way a glob of paint is laid on paper. Initially, that is all there is. A drop of paint. When I have the courage to take my brush and dare to move with the flow of the paint, something begins to happen. I am invited to connect with my mind, body and spirit. Sometimes the invitation is to add another color, a line – a brushstroke. There are times when my spirit whispers to slow down, step back and rest my eyes and hand. In the stillness, my gremlin voice prods and pokes the loudest. The inner critic screams, “STOP”! How dare you think yourself creative! Who do you think you are?” When I choose to ignore those voices and listen to the gentle, playful, beckoning voice of the Holy Spirit, nothing becomes something. A glob begins to give way to something that I suspected was within me and longing to break free.
On this journey called life, walking daily with Christ, when we dare to listen and move forth, we begin to see what God sees. Each step – each hesitant and bold move around the bend, reveals a surprising glimpse – a detail stepping out from the shadows of your life.
As you consider your giftedness, the marvelous in you, take time and reflect on one thing that God is forming in you. What is the “something” that God is forming anew in you?
