Who Am I?

Several months ago, I was asked to reflect upon three questions. These questions were to be the center of my contemplative prayer and the answers of which were to be the aim of all my efforts. The questions were: Who am I, Who is God, and What is our relationship.

At first this may seem very simple, and maybe you can even come up with a quick easy answer to these. However, one needs to go deeper than a surface level response in order to remotely grasp the answer. Strip away everything before answering any of these.

All three of these questions have a common link, humility; thus, before going farther, I feel the need to define such a holy fundamental word. Humility is not hiding away your talents. It is not becoming small in the eyes of others. It is not degrading or allowing yourself to be degraded by others. Humility is simply having and acting upon the knowledge of who you are in relationship to God. It means seeing the gifts God gave you and using them when they are needed. Humility means realizing exactly who you are, not what people have made you out to be. It means seeing the great value you are worth and living that truthfully and faithfully.

Now, let us look at the questions. There are two inseparable recognitions one needs to make to genuinely understand who they are. The first aspect is the perception that compared to God we are nothing and deserve nothing. Without God, simply put, we would not be living; in fact, we would not even exist much less be able to take a single breath. The second part is the realization that God loved us so much that He sent His only begotten Son to the world to open the gates of mercy and salvation to us so that we may become His adopted children through the death of Christ, the sacrificial Lamb, upon the cross.

What many of us tend to forget is that God not only made us in His image and likeness, but He also saved us out of LOVE! Live that LOVE and DIGNITY! While the world screams in our ears to be totally self-sufficient and to walk over anyone who gets in the way of our success, our God whispers to our soul, stay in Me and I shall remain in you, be humble and depend upon Me for I shall fill you with My mercy and grace because I love you.

Thus, as I often do, here is my challenge. I dare you to take sometime after reading this and see if you can answer the questions: Who are you? Who is God to you? What is your relationship with Him?