Who are you? I’ll get back to that question, but first, I need to warm up to it. Here’s a completely different question: what do you do? It’s a very simple, straightforward question. Yet, every time I’m asked, it causes me to take pause. But why? I’m just being asked to describe what I do from Monday to Friday around the hours of nine to five. You see, it’s just not that simple. Regardless of the asker, I have to impress them just a little while feigning modesty. I got a job that fits me, that exudes who I am and I’m going to have to let you have it when you walk into that trap of my awesomeness.

Returning back to earth. So, that was a little dramatic, but I think you get the point. Somewhere along the line, an identity has been forged out of a mere occupation. Entire lives are lived based on this thought when a career merely points toward who someone is, wants to be or wants others to believe they are. I think I fall into the latter trap, but really I should be focusing on my job giving a little insight into who I am. Now, I could be wrong, but I think our grandparents got this. They took jobs that they didn’t necessarily love (but didn’t really hate, either) because they knew it was just what they had to do.

“You need to figure out who you are.”

Blurring the lines. The statement above sent me into a tizzy of mental activity. A simple statement from my dad sent me reeling and that’s when it happened. I answered “Who am I?” with the question “What do I want to be when I grow up?” I answered with what I wanted to do for a living to the question of my being. It wasn’t until eating breakfast this morning that the gravity of this misperception begun to hit me.

Characters without a script. People who don’t actively know who they are resemble actors on a stage who haven’t read their own back stories. They may nail the lines, but they are playing a different part altogether from the one they were cast. Sure, we may be living great lives, doing great things, but at the end of the day, we may be selling ourselves short on what God made us to be. Why? Because we didn’t take the time to ask Him? No, because we didn’t take the time to listen.

Busyness is currency. We’re too busy with our jobs, personas, social lives to slow down for that. We have time to complain, but no time for a quick word from our Maker. We can spend an entire weekend watching football only leaving the couch for beer, food or the bathroom, yet tuning into God is always getting rescheduled. How far have I, have we fallen? Where are our priorities? The bigger question is, for what are we compensating?

God only made whole people with well-defined back stories and brilliant identities defined in Himself. Yet, somewhere along the line we decided that wasn’t enough. We came to the conclusion that we were incomplete and so we found something to fill the “void”. My career isn’t big enough for that hole and it probably isn’t big enough for yours, either. I ask you the same question I’m asking myself, “Who told you that you were insufficient?” The answer that rings in my head is “I made you to be complete.” Is it too much to stop our frenetic break-neck pace and listen to the One from who we get our identity? Is it too much to listen to the One who’s been trying to answer all along who are you?