Dear Faith Family,
What answer would you give to someone who asked you to describe what questions you'd ask to know someone, even yourself, truly? Would your questions start with the general list: Where did you grow up? What schools did you attend? Where do you work? What are your hobbies? What is your favorite...? These aren't bad questions, but they don't quite get to the core of what we are after, the true self of the one we are examining.
Maybe then, we'd go a bit deeper and ask more intimate questions like What are your greatest accomplishments and strengths? What are your weaknesses and biggest disappointments?
These questions get us closer, but the person we are looking for is more than what they achieve or fail to achieve. And while limitations are a part of every one of us, they only shape how we live, not who we are.
So then, what question could we ask to truly know someone, even ourselves? Well, the poet, scholar, and Trappist Monk, Thomas Merton, helps us get a little closer. Modernizing his lead-in, here is what Merton contends,
“If you want to identify me, ask me not where I grew up nor where I live, or about my Instagram timeline, or even my daily habits, but ask me what I am living for, in detail, ask me what I think is keeping me from living fully for the thing I want to live for.”
The question Merton says identifies him is a question of commitment: To what/who have you given yourself away, specifically? Merton knows we cannot settle for a passing passion in this examination. What or who we give ourselves away is detailed, for to be truly given away is to be wholly committed, handed over, abandoned.
When we can answer this question, we'll truly know another, even ourselves.
Merton's better question can be intimidating, even overwhelming, especially if we are uncertain of what we are actually giving our life for or are nervous about what is keeping us from doing so. Graciously, the question of our commitment is not one we have (or even can) answer alone.
Over the next several weeks, we'll look for our individual answers together, and Lord willing, (re)discover a committed life...of joy. But this week, I encourage you to start where we'll start on Sunday, getting to know ourselves in God's knowledge of us through Psalm 139, asking our Father in Jesus' name for that which we desire,
Father, in the name of—with the heart of and wholly committed to— Jesus, and in the Spirit of Jesus, we ask; Search us! Know our hearts! Examine us and know our disquieting thoughts! See if there is any way in which we grieve Your heart and hurt others as well as ourselves. And by your Spirit of Truth, lead us in the way ancient and everlasting! Amen.
Love you, faith family! God bless my friends.