WHO AM I? WHY AM I HERE?

         One of my favorite Broadway musicals is Les Miserables. In one scene protagonist Jean ValJean, a former convict who has fled his parole and assumed a new identity, agonizes over whether he should continue to live as that new person or reveal his true self in order to spare a wrongly-accused man from prison. “Who Am I?”, ValJean sings in the midst of this personal struggle.

Who am I? What a great question. It’s one that nearly everybody wrestles with throughout adolescence, and often beyond. Who am I? Where do I fit in? What is my purpose? Unsurprisingly, God has an answer to all of these questions. Who am I? “You are my beloved child, whom I have created and care about deeply.” Psalm 139 tells us of this, where the Psalmist reminds us that God not only fashioned and molded us while we were growing, but actually knew who we were going to be even as we were being created! God knows who we are even when we ourselves aren’t entirely sure, and there is a certain degree of comfort to be taken in that thought.

       As for the other two questions, God has a purpose for each one of us, a place where we are supposed to be. It’s not always where we think we want to be, or should be; that’s why the continuing process of discernment is so important. Sometimes it requires us to enter difficult situations or circumstances, and we have to trust God more deeply to be with us in those times. A good measure of whether we are where we are called to be is joy. In the Peer Ministry Leadership Training that some of our high school students have completed, there is a great paraphrase included of 20th-century theologian Frederick Buechner’s quote about ministry and calling, that goes like this: “Ministry happens when my deepest gladness [joy] meets the world’s greatest needs.” If we find deep joy (not just superficial happiness) in something we are doing, and it’s addressing something the world desparately needs, even on a microscopic level, then that is ministry happening, and responding to God’s call.

        This Sunday, our youth will be leading worship and sharing their experiences from both the ELCA Youth Gathering in New Orleans and our Appalachia Service Project work week this past summer. The themes for these events were “Created to Be” and “Building Kindness,” respectively, which together nicely capture the idea of who we are and what is our purpose. As they (and we) continue to explore both of those questions, let us all take heart in remembering that God already knows; it’s just a matter of us learning to listen better to God!

-Craig Miller