My pater familias likes to remind me that we are “human beings.”  Not human doings.  Personally, I need a lot of reminding.  When I was in school, I needed to remember I wasn’t just a student.  When I was new to the workforce, I wasn’t just some ignorant kid.  When I was in government consulting, I still wasn’t defined by my job.  And when I left to work in a kitchen, and then life asked me to stay at home because of work changing and changing family dynamic, I wasn’t defined by that either.  And I’m still not defined by all that I do.  Or don’t do.

We live in a world hellbent on identities.  Who we are defined by what we do, what we accomplish.

The problem with this, of course, is that circumstances change.  We live in a world of constant motion.

We’re single.  Married.  Painfully divorced or separated after years.  Together for longer than not.

We leave our jobs of five, ten, 15, 40 years.  Or are fired.  Or walk away in search of better, different.  We are left unemployed through sickness, or layoffs, or life.

We have more babies than we were “supposed to.”  Or choose not to.  Or life doesn’t work out the way we thought, and we’re on hold.  With relationships, let alone children.

We suffer, be it when our hearts break in a million tiny pieces, or we have an invisible disease that’s killing us from the inside.

We’re happy, and in love, and our hearts are raw outside our body for the first, or the tenth time.

In the English world, in this post-postmodern society, we define a lot with the statement “I am.”  And we put stickers on the back of our car to make sure the world knows these things that we “are.”

But God chooses none of these things to define Himself.  When he reveals Himself to man for the first time after the fall, He is the divine être, the source of all being.  And “All things were made by Him; and without Him was not any thing made that was made”  (John 1:3 KJV)

“I AM” says the Creator of the universe in Exodus 3.  Can you fathom the smirk on His face reading a “Jesus is a Democrat” bumper sticker?

We get so caught up in defining and redefining ourselves.  I get caught up in defining myself.  The French/Communications major who can’t get her three year old to understand.  The words.  Coming.  Out.  Of my.  Mouth.

What my identity appears to be.  Of what kind of box I live in as a white, married, heterosexual, Christian female mother and how much that box can limit if that’s the way I define myself.

Vomit.

In Galatians 3, Paul reminds us that “You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.  There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.  If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.”  (NIV)

God chooses over and over to define Himself not by color or race, not by sexual orientation or political standing.  But by His character.  His love.  His grace.  His perfection.  His Word.  His sovereign Will and judgment.  And Hebrews 13 assures us that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.”

We don’t have to concern ourselves about what we’re “doing.”  Or have fear or take pride in being identified by this moment.  Or the next.  Not by our circumstances, successes, failures or accomplishments.  We’ve been adopted as heirs to Christ, and the most important identity we can take on is His character.  His Name that never changes.