Over the recent years I've come to appreciate this rather curious phrase - 'Becoming Who We Are'.
It's the title of Kings Kaleidoscope's 2014 album. An amazing listen - its pretty rare to find me singing along to music! During NTE mission 2015, we gifted a copy to our host family. I then bought a digital copy myself!
At first I was intrigued but paid little attention - album titles are often cryptic. But now that I'm older (gosh!) and have a little more life experience, I can really start to appreciate more of the actual meaning into this phrase, and its relevance.
Chad from the band gives some insight into its meaning:
But actually, it was my wife’s idea to come up with the name Becoming Who We Are and it’s a spin-off of a quote of something she’d been reading but – I think to us the meaning of that title is in a lot of ways, it’s the Christian walk. We are becoming who we already are in Jesus. For us that’s always true because we’re Christians.
Chad Gardner, 2014.
Interviewed by Sam Robinson (Reel Gospel/Hope 103.2)
It is the word "becoming" that really gets to me. Sure, as a Christian, I might already "know" what my identity in Jesus is:
a. I am a child of God.
b. God is my Father.
c. Heaven is my home.
d. Every day is one day nearer to Jesus’ return.
e. Jesus is my brother.
f. Every Christian is my sibling, too.
(J.I. Packer)
But this really is only head knowledge until I start to live it out. Particularly through life's ups and downs, the challenges and the hard times... those seasons really are okay because of who I already am in Jesus. And Jesus gives a sure, steadfast hope that I can hold onto throughout it all.
Without God, we rebel against him and try to go in the opposite direction... "becoming what we are not...[even though] what we are is inescapable." (lyric from from Propaganda - It's Complicated).
So, dear Christian, are you becoming who you are?
References
- "Who am I becoming?" https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43982455-the-ruthless-elimination-of-hurry (haven't read myself, but I know someone I can borrow this off 😀)
2026 called:
“Every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different than it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing into a heavenly creature or a hellish creature: either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow creatures, and with itself. To be the one kind of creature is heaven: that is, it is joy and peace and knowledge and power. To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence, and eternal loneliness. Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state of the other.” - C.S Lewis
Who are you becoming? Ad what do your actions and decisions pull you towards in becoming?