From a talk we gave yesterday on identity:
Social situations are a bit like playing cards. You get dealt a hand in life. Maybe your strong suit is your looks – you can rely on them to impress others or win you an instant audience.
Perhaps it’s something else: your ability on the sports field or reputation as karaoke queen.
If you’re bright, then you play the brains card. Or perhaps you’re funny, so you throw out the joker instead.
Maybe, you’re neither bright, nor pretty. But you can be moral instead. In Christian circles at least, ‘nice’ is an ace. If it were an Olympic sport, we’d all win gold. (On Sunday morning at least)..
Many of us feel like we haven’t been dealt a good hand. Perhaps we played some cards in the past and lost. Perhaps we were rejected by our parents or a girlfriend or a university or friends or a job – and now, now we’ve given up trying. Perhaps we withdraw – silent, clutching our cards close to our chest. But even shyness can be a strategy.
We’ve all been dealt different cards. These are out of our control. What we can control is how we play them.
So here’s a question – what does ‘winning’ look like?
-getting the other players to like us ?
– annihilating the competition?
– making a profit?
– or something else?
Read the full talk here
I read the whole talk. It is very good. In the last few years God dealt a lot with the roots of my identity. I became very confused and I remember sometimes sharing my problem with other people they looked at me worried like to somebody who has got mental illness. Then I felt even more confused. Is this only my problem in the whole world? Anyway, one day I was in a car with some friends and while they chatted the whole problem fell upon me like a very hard burden. I didn’t know what to do, it was so heavy. I cried out to God. Suddenly I heard an answer, something like this: ‘your job, your social position, your bank account, your family background, etc. are like your clothes. They are not you, you can take them off. The value is in you, not in your clothes.’ From one moment to the other I felt staying naked in front of God, all my false identity falling apart. But in the same time I felt loved and accepted again by an everlasting Father.
‘The value is in you, not your clothes’. What a powerful testimony: thank you Kinga. x