wonderfulpileofdust

[wonderfulpileofdust]

What is man? By Beniamin Kis

Who am I?

No, this is not the Linux terminal command which tells the user, his/her username. (That’s spelled “whoami”). But it’s a question which we have to answer to ourselves sooner or later. Rather sooner than later.

All my life I liked to think of myself as an emotionally stable, always positive, always optimistic individual, who doesn’t really care about other people’s opinions or thoughts about him. I have never experienced depression, or excessive sadness, or dark thoughts, or loneliness… That is, until a few months ago, when the love of my life (or so I thought) has decided that after 11 years of being together and married for 5 years, it was time to move on. To what? I don’t know. Maybe she doesn’t know either.

So how did this happen? How did the love transform into hatred and bitterness? How did we get so lost from each other, that we could not find the way back?

Well, it’s simple: when you take out God from a relationship, it almost always falls apart. Our story, although it started beautiful, has ended crashing and burning, because we were not watching. Jesus says to his disciples: “Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” Oh, how right was He!

We started our relationship well, with prayer and Bible study, meaningful discussions (we’ve met on a christian forum, for cryin’ out loud). It was one of the things which attracted me about her, that she seemed to be so close to God, and had such an amazing knowledge of the Bible and other books, that I felt almost stupid around her.

Somewhere, along the way, we have shifted the focus of our relationship to a more… earthlyperspective, thus opening the door to temptation and sin.

I got addicted to video games, she got addicted to social media and movies, we stopped praying together, we stopped having a healthy spiritual life, she cut off all her relationships with people from the church, got involved in toxic relationships, I started being angry all the time and pouring out all my frustrations to her, often shouting and using an inadequate tone. The presence of God was slowly replaced with anger, lies, absence of communication, resentment and, in the end, with hatred. The love, which was supposed to unite us and keep us together, you know, the one from 1 Corinthians 13, was transformed to resentment and repulsion and set lightyears of distance between us.

So, one day, she told me: “I’m leaving…”

I said: “Where?”

“I don’t know” she said.. “away…”

That was the moment I knew she was not coming back. A few months later we sat in the notary’s office, signing the divorce papers.

Inevitably, questions started to flood my mind, I started to doubt myself, my identity, which led me to these questions: Who am I, really? What did I accomplish in almost 30 years of my life? Am I still the same person she married? What’s my purpose? What is the purpose of life, in general? Where did I do wrong? Why did this happen to me? Why can’t I be happy like others of my age? Why did I miss the signs? Why couldn’t we repair things? Why did it end this way? Here I am, 30 and divorced, who’s gonna even look at me?

…and soooo many other questions. Most of them unanswered.

But returning to one question: who am I? I have found my answer. And it’s written in God’s holy Word:

- “I will give thanks and praise to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Wonderful are Your works, And my soul knows it very well.” [Ps. 139:14]

- “for dust you are and to dust you will return.” [Gen. 3:19]

I am a wonderful pile of dust, which means I am precious in the eyes of God, so precious that He won’t allow me to live on this earth filled with selfishness, materialism, pride, abuse, disobedience, ungratefulness, unholiness, hatred, unforgivingness, slander, lack of self-control, violence, betrayal, rashness, hedonism, duplicity, in this daily-degrading body, forever. He has promised me that He’ll go and prepare a place for me:

- “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.” [John 14:1-3]

So, every time I forget who I am in Christ, I’d always return to these Scripture references:

- I am God’s workmanship, created in Christ unto good works. (Ephesians 2:10)

- I am an ambassador for Christ. (2 Corinthians 5:20)

- I am part of a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a purchased people. (1 Peter 2:9)

- I am greatly loved by God. (Romans 1:7; Ephesians 2:4; Colossians 3:12; 1 Thessalonians 1:4)

- I am born of God, and the evil one does not touch me. (1 John 5:18)

- I am complete in Him Who is the Head of all principality and power. (Colossians 2:10)

Ending this blogpost with a song, dear to my heart:

“Who the Son sets free Oh is free indeed I’m a child of God Yes I am In my Father’s house There’s a place for me I’m a child of God Yes I am

I am chosen Not forsaken I am who You say I am You are for me Not against me I am who You say I am”

(Youtube Link to the song)

That’s who I am, a child of the almighty God, King of heaven and earth, who gives life and made all things out of nothing!

I have no more doubts, as a christian who has accepted His sacrifice and declared with my lips that I believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God, who has died for my sins and saved me from eternal death, and neither should you, if you did all these things.