“I have loved you with an everlasting love” (Jeremiah 31:3).
“But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us” (Romans 8:37).
We are loved. We are winners.
“I’m me and that’s good. Cause God don’t make no junk.” –from a poster by a child in a ghetto. (source unknown)
The man said, “I think my wife’s health problems go back to something in her childhood, as to how she was treated. She seems to have trouble accepting who she is in Christ.”
It’s always fascinating to consider what gives us our identity. And what conditions robbed us of the same.
Smart Aleck is the biography of Alexander Woollcott, drama critic for the New York Times a long time ago. Woollcott is said to have been a master wordsmith, which is what made me order the book in the first place.
Woollcott came from an impoverished background and carried enough personal hangups and oddities to set him apart for the rest of his life. He was overweight, oddly shaped, and egotistical. And those, goes the old joke, were his good points! When the New York Times hired him, that newspaper was one of 8 or 10 competing in that market, and not particularly distinguished. His pay was $15 a week, and yet he was thrilled. The author says he loved being “Alexander Woollcott of the New York Times.”
“At last,” writes author Howard Teichmann, “the sense of belonging began to set in…. Being somebody was infinitely better than being nobody.”
This may be why while unemployment is difficult for everyone, but men in particular have a problem with it. Their identity is so often bound up in their jobs. When men meet, they often begin with “What do you do?” The answer helps to define us, we feel, whether accurately or not.
Ministers who find themselves unemployed experience the same weightlessness, the sensation of not belonging and thus being nobody. For a long time, the minister had introduced himself as “Pastor of Central Baptist Church” or “Assistant Pastor of First Church.” Suddenly, that goes away. Now, who is he?