![]() I was always taught that I was the man in the story who needed to give up everything in order to “gain” the Kingdom of God. There is that parable where Jesus speaks of the Kingdom of God being like a man who, having found a treasure in a field, sold everything he had in order to buy the field and gain the treasure. We would hear him call us his treasure, and we would come alive. We would hear him tell us that we are enough because he says so. If only we could learn to run to Christ, the one who calls us his beloved, his bride, the child that he chose to welcome into his family. We turn inward and refuse to risk disappointing those we love by withholding ourselves from them.īut of course all of these desperate grabs for significance leave us worse off than we were before - more empty, more ashamed, and with more regret. We flee to workaholism determined to prove our value – our life and vocation shaped by a fear of failing. We escape into the fantasy world of pornography where for a moment we can imagine ourselves desired and wanted with no risk of rejection. ![]() We surround ourselves with symbols of status that we hope will convince us of our worth. We can’t live under the oppression of inadequacy long before we start looking for ways to escape the shame and loneliness of it, and things go from bad to worse as we flee from the curse by running to things we hope will make us feel loved, desirable, and worthy. The constant, nagging fear that we don’t and never will measure up is like a pebble in our shoe that troubles every step of our journey. This carries in it the idea of futility: that our efforts are frustrated, that no matter what we do, we feel it’s never enough – that perhaps we are never enough. Genesis chapter three tells us that one of the first consequences of sin entering the world is that the ground would be cursed, that we would eat by the sweat of our brow and the soil would produce weeds and thistles. So sin begins to look more like addiction than anything else, as though there is a ravenous hunger deep inside of me that demands to be fed. Or as the apostle Paul famously said, “I decide to do good, but I don’t really do it I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway…” ( The Message) And while that may be true in part, another truth is that most, if not all, of the time I really don’t want to sin, so that I do so seemingly against my own will. The idea I absorbed in my formative years was that I sin because of my willful disobedience. Much of what inspired this song grew from that conversation. It all had the whiff of a divine appointment, and thanks to Southwest Airline’s open seating policy, Ron was soon seated next to me and for the next three hours I got an education that brought some clarity to my understanding of myself and the way the human heart works. So when he spotted me, smiled, and said “I’m sitting by you!” I guess I felt a little like the girl from America’s Got Talent – “Ron Block wants to sit by me?” I thought to myself. Heck, he even made an appearance in one of my favorite movies: “Oh Brother Where Art Thou”. Not only is Ron a really kind and intelligent guy, but he also happens to be in one of the most accomplished bands in the world, Alison Krauss’s Union Station. ![]() It had been on my mind to give him a call for several months already when, sitting on a plane in Seattle one night in January, I watched him board. He knew something that I want to know, and so I wanted to talk with him. Our resident expert on the issue of identity here in the Rabbit Room is Ron Block, whose posts and comments are fragrant with the hope of the new creation alive and available to each of us. The song is called “Remind Me Who I Am” and has an origin story that might interest Rabbit Roomers.įor the last few years my journey has circled around the idea of identity, where we find it, and why it matters. Today marks the release of the first radio single from my upcoming record, A Way To See In The Dark. For a moment at least, it silences the voice of fear that is always making a case for our unworthiness. ![]() To be highly regarded by somebody important to you: it’s heady and humbling at the same time. She replied, “Well, it’s that these amazing people think I’m good, too.” Backstage, she was asked why this was such an exciting and emotional moment for her. show “America’s Got Talent.” She told me about this eleven-year-old girl, small in stature and unassuming, who blew the celebrity judges away with her amazing performance and won their highest praise. My mother recently told me about a moving moment from the T.V.
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