"Do you know who you are?"

A thought by Max Lucado, from his book, You Were Made for This Moment (p. 42). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.  (Click on the book title to go to Amazon to buy the book.)

That is a good question, a very good question.

Max continues, "And whose you are?

"You are the presence of Jesus in this world—an eternal being, destined for an eternal home. Pimply faced and gangly? Hogwash. You are a citizen of heaven. Unique in all of creation. . . The devil can’t touch you. The demons can’t have you. The world can’t possess you. What people think about you matters not one whit. You belong to your heavenly Father."

A live oak

He goes on, "I received an unexpected reminder about my identity a few weeks ago. My wife and I had the opportunity to drive through my hometown and pay respects at the grave site of my mom and dad. It’d been ten years since our last visit. It is easy to locate their burial spot. It is the only one with a live oak tree. The cemetery has many trees, mind you, but only one live oak. I can’t explain my dad’s fondness for this Texas tree. They have gnarly, knuckled trunks and tend to grow in all angles. But for some reason Dad took such a liking to them that he planted one over his burial plot. He’d just been diagnosed with ALS, and wanting to get his affairs in order, he requested permission to plant the tree.

"He took me to see it. Barely a sapling it was. So small that I could wrap my hand around it and touch finger to thumb. That was three and a half decades ago. Today the trunk is as thick as a man’s torso, and its branches extend far over the grave site. But it wasn’t the size of the tree that impressed me; it was what my dad had carved.

"A heart. I’d never noticed it. He etched the design and scraped out the bark so that as the tree has grown, so has the carving. In the center of the heart are the initials of his kids. When the tree was small, the heart was small as well. But as the tree has expanded, so has the message. He never told us that he did this. I suppose he wanted to leave a surprise. He knew we would need a reminder of his love, so he left it notched into the trunk. You have a place in my heart."

Max says, "Your Father did the same. Not with a live oak tree, but with a cross. Not with a carving, but with the crimson blood of Christ. Years have passed, and the heart of the cross, the message of the cross, has only grown."

He then says, "To the middle school version of Max, God says, 'Look at Jesus Christ on the tree of Calvary. Let me tell you who you are. You are made special by the work of Christ.' "

Earlier Max had shared of a time when he was in middle school, "I had one thing going for me: I could play baseball. Not great, but good enough for my father to convince me to try out for Pony League and good enough to get selected. Pony League, in case you don’t know, bridges those unwieldy years between Little League and high school. I was a newcomer on a squad of seventh and eighth graders.

"The first day of practice was a cold day in March. The winter wind kept spring at bay. A blue norther dropped the mercury and bent the barely budding trees. Mom gave me a sweatshirt to wear. It bore the emblem of Abilene Christian College, a fine liberal arts institution from which my sisters had graduated and where I would eventually do the same. I was already in the car en route to the practice—my first practice with studly upperclassmen—when I pulled on the sweatshirt and saw the words “Abilene Christian.” I was mortified. I could not show up wearing a shirt that bore the name 'Christian.' Cool kids aren’t Christians. The in crowd isn’t Christian. I couldn’t debut as a Christian. The odds were already stacked against me. I was a Poindexter and a rookie.

"The confession of what I did next might result in my defrocking. When Mom dropped me off at the practice field, I waited until she was out of view, and then I peeled off the shirt. I wadded it into a ball and stuck it in the base of the backstop. Rather than risk being left out by the team, I chose to shiver in short sleeves."

Back to where we were, he then says, "Like me, you’ve had, and will have, your sweatshirt moments. In those moments remember who you are."

And we too need to be reminded of our identity, don't we? Yes, yes! #continuethought