Be.

I’ve been called a lot of things in my life. I’ve been labeled and often accepted the way others have seen me - allowing that to shape how I then approached my life. Some times this was good. Some times this was bad. I tried to think of as many of the ways I have either described myself to others or the way others have labeled me over the years. Here's what I came up with:

a child. a son. a brother. a bother. a bowler. a friend. a student. an athlete. a nerd. a loud mouth. an artist. a bully. a troublemaker. a leader. a follower. an underachiever. a slow reader. an emotional mess. a fighter. a single. a floater. a graduate. an undecider. a transfer. a ywamer. a fundamentalist. a do-all. a helper. a janitor. a pastor. a heretic. a wonderer. a bike guy. a marketer. a designer. a seminarian. an individual. a writer. a loner. a quitter. a believer. a hoper.

A pastor of mine often says, we are beautiful and broken. And we don’t have to look very far to see that do we? We can look at lists like the one of mine and see both the ways we want to be seen and the ways we don’t want to be seen. We are this beautiful and broken mess.

So who are you? Take a moment and think about that for a minute...

Think about all the ways you have been labeled, named, called, or things you've believed about yourself – the good, the bad, and even the ugly.

Do you notice theme or pattern of these?

The pattern I see is that so many of these things simply relate to the things we do or have done. Many of these things seem to say our only value comes from the things we do.It’s not that what we do doesn't have value, because how we choose to live matters; God desires us to be people who both believe rightly but also live rightly. But ‘rightly’ might be the wrong word for it, maybe it would better be said that God desires us to live putting flesh and blood to who He says we are. And to know that, we have to go back to the beginning to see what God called us, labeled us, and invited us into with Him.

In the story of how all things came to be, we see this beautiful chorus occurring as God brought everything out of nothing. God makes heavens and the earth, light and dark, the sky, the land and sea, the plants and all the animals – each time blessing each thing even some of oddest of His creation, like the platypus.

Then it happens:

God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.”

So God created humankind in his image,    in the image of God he created them;    male and female he created them.

God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.” God said, “See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

God invites people to do things but this is after God has already done everything. In some ways there is nothing for us to do. God says go make babies, go create, go explore, take care of the world and eat well. And before we are told that our ancestors had done anything, God says you are very good.

God calls you not only good, but very good.

This is not to say we are perfect, far from it. We all know the things we think and act when no one or few are looking. We all know the things we try to hide from others. But God says, inspite of all that that you have value for simply being His creation.

God valued you before you did anything.

God wants us to be.

God is not afraid of any of the ways we label ourselves.

God is does not believe any of the ways we have been labeled.

God simply desires us to be.

God invites every single part of us to be.

Can we simply be?