LOST IDENTITY

"BE CAREFUL!" we are told. Many TV ads attempt to alert us to the easy theft of our identities.

A little scrap of paper with our credit card number or address or bank information might be the trail someone could follow to steal our entire bank account. An unscrupulous person can secretly assume our name and abscond with our possessions.

Of course no one can actually steal our identity. Each of us is who we have always been: irreplaceable and unduplicatable. No one can exactly match our fingerprints or our genetic makeup.

Nevertheless, at times we may feel that we've lost our identity when we are swallowed up by an anonymous crowd. Or when we lose the job that gave us career identity. Or we retire and no one remembers “who we were before.” It seems that we are not anybody anymore. We don't have amnesia, but we have suffered a painful loss of our identity. 

Not so! Each of us is a unique individual and Jesus calls us by name!

I'M NOT NOBODY!

There is a bursting in my spirit

to find my identity.

The world pressures me,

advocating conformity,

debasing my personality,

championing uniformity.

I abhor the abnormality

of my struggle for individuality

as I stumble around to see

whether I have any destiny.

I feel swallowed up in the futility

of being just a facsimile

of humanity.

BUT...

*Jesus knows my name!

I'm not a nonentity.

Before I was born

God predestined me

and designed Calvary

to set me free

from Satan's captivity

and break me out

of the mold of anonymity.

I'm not consigned to the monotony

of mankind's homogeneity.

In Jesus, I'm not a generality.

What a discovery!

I'm not nobody!

I'm not generic

and I'm really me

*because Jesus knows my name!

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* “...and He calls His own sheep by name...”

John 10:3b