There’s a Man who removes masks for the low-low price of the question

It’s not secret the past two and a half years have been nothing short of an adventure. Internally and as a public display of self-destruction and preservation. It’s been a blast. Seriously, I’ve learned a lot, too much to process at times.

The past few months (really, if I’m being honest, since October ’10) have been a consistently inconsistent roller coaster of peaks and valleys. Sometimes as little as a minute passes between them, sometimes as much as a month or two. The valleys have always been a constant part of my identity. Since I can remember there has been a certain sense of “less than” or of  ”something else is out there that you’re missing” inside me. Doctors call that depression. A few years ago I dealt with it medically, had to, to wake up and actually move from lying down in self-pity and shallow selfishness to walking around in defeat and a small amount of hope.

I stopped that. And since then, God, the God of creation, father of Jesus Christ, has been working very tangibly in my heart. Calling me out of those depths into….well….into what?

I grew up in a Christian home. A great family that, as anyone else’s, had its issues and inconsistencies. I was never faced with a REAL threat of my existence or an honest and soul-churning questioning of who I am in this world.

Lately I’ve wrestled a lot. Not in the spandex and sweat kind of way but in the mind and heart way. Then, just the other day, sitting around a table with two of my newest and currently closest friends, I realized that my identity is unknown to me.

In Matthew, Jesus asks Peter “Who do the people say I am?” Peter answers “Elijah, some say John the Baptist, some Jeremiah…” To which Jesus follows up with a question so basic, so simple. So easy and plain that it is one of a devastating nature that we must all: atheist, Christian, Muslim, seeking, close-minded, wrestle with.

“But what about you? Who do you say I am?”

 

 

 

 

Wait for it…

 

 

 

Yeah…there it is.

 

 

 

After 28+ years of living, I am finally realizing that He has been asking this in my life for years without my hearing it. Who, Morgan, do you know me to be in your life? Who are you through me in this world, my son? (Although the last seems to present the answer within the shell of the question, it’s never that simple.)

So, as a 28-year-old man, I find myself as open and expectant (not expecting) as a child on their first day of school. The new definition of a world I’ve been quietly existing in is at hand in my life and I am absolutely ecstatic about the possibility of being freed from my cynical and questioning nature!

There is an existential heartbeat beneath the entirety of everything in and on this earth. By asking the questions, we can get to a place where we may not get specific answers but we get leading questions that allow the search to renew  itself and bring us closer to the savior that has been by our side the entire time.

This life is Yours, and all that is within it. Thank you for that freedom. Amen.

 

Good night beautiful world.