“The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
PSALM 103-104
JOURNAL
Yesterday I talked with my 7th graders about Walt Whitman and these words:
“What good amid these, O me, O life?
Answer.
That you are here, that life exists and identity,
That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.”
There is something incredible about putting those words in front of a room full of 12 and 13 year olds. Their lives are just beginning to unfold, and yet they are already contributing their verse. So am I. So is every person I encounter today. The powerful play Whitman describes is not some story happening somewhere else. It is this life, right now. And when I really think about it, the present life is more amazing and intriguing than any play, movie, or novel ever written because it is real, it is unfolding, and somehow God has allowed each of us to participate in it.
Maybe that is part of what it means to be “fearfully and wonderfully made.” I am not simply another person passing through time. Neither are those kids sitting in my classroom. Neither is the person I pass in the hallway, the stranger at the store, or the people I love most. Every human being carries an identity and a story that has never existed before and will never exist again. The world around us is equally astonishing. Creation is alive with beauty, tragedy, mystery, joy, grief, love, failure, redemption, and possibility. Tolkien captured it so beautifully when he wrote that although the world contains peril and dark places, there is still so much that is fair, and somehow love mingled with grief can grow even greater.
Psalm 103 adds another layer to Whitman's words. We are dust. Our lives are like grass and flowers of the field. The wind passes over them and they are gone. There is humility in that truth, but strangely there is also freedom. My verse does not have to make me famous or distinguish me from everyone else. It simply needs to be mine, faithfully lived in the part of the story God has given me. And while my life is temporary, God's love is everlasting. My identity is therefore not ultimately rooted in how impressive my verse becomes. It is rooted in the One to whom I belong. “Whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord.”
Through many struggles I have slowly come to understand that the closer I draw to God, the more clearly I understand myself, flaws and gifts together. I don't disappear into God. Somehow I become more fully the person He created me to be. Surrender is not the destruction of identity. It is the discovery of it. My soul becomes stitched more permanently to His love, and from that place I can enter the powerful play without desperately trying to control the ending or earn the applause.
Maybe this is the perspective God wants me to embrace each morning: I am here. Life exists. Identity exists. God is here. And today I get to contribute a verse. I don't know everything that will happen in today's scene. There will be darkness and beauty, grief and joy, success and disappointment. But I have an anchor. Christ is the cornerstone, the sure foundation beneath all of it. Because of that, I can stop trying to consume life in search of identity and instead begin contributing life from an identity already given to me.
What an incredible way to see today. The powerful play goes on. By the grace of God, I am in it. And I get to contribute my verse.
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