Do You Know Who You Are?
By Meg Bucher
“Love must be sincere. Hate was is evil; cling to what is good.” – Romans 12:9 NIV
The magic of a child’s imagination is breathtaking, beautiful, and sincere. Currently, my youngest daughter has been skipping happily throughout the house, singing one of the songs from Disney’s Moana:
“I have crossed the horizon to find you… I know your name… They have stolen the heart from inside you… But this does not define you… This is not who you are… You know who you are…”
As a budding tween, my daughter is experiencing the push and prod of trying to figure out “who she is.” When I pray over her each night, I often ask her… “Do you know who you are?” Then, I assure her of who and Whose she is. I remind her she has a purpose. But still, nothing takes the sting out of growing up.
As a mother, I hate when my kids hurt. When they are left out, bullied, made fun of, and mocked, my anger is very real. Not all anger is bad. Righteous anger, like hating what is evil, is a healthy emotion. It just needs to be directed appropriately.
“Hate” in Romans 12:9 means to “have a horror of.” Around Halloween, the local amusement park celebrates with people running around in spooky costumes. Though my daughter knows they aren’t real, her gut instinct is HORROR. She shrieks and screams and no matter how much courage she builds up on the way to the park, it evaporates the first time someone with scary face paint sneaks up on her.
Evil is supposed to make us shriek with horror. Not just the obviously scary and spooky, but the distorted thoughts that threaten to convince us we’re nothing, that the world would be better off without us, and that we’ll never make it. The VOICE paraphrase of Romans 12:9 reads, “Love others well, and don’t hide behind a mask; love authentically. Despise evil; pursue what is good as if your life depends on it.”
And many lives do. Cling to what is good. CLING. Don’t for a second hold on to or look back at something horrifying. We have to kick evil out of our thoughts and get righteously angry over the evil we see twisting up the world God created. Even if it means we stand alone for a bit.
Do we know who we are? Can we choose to remind each other? Our kids? Our neighbors? Can we find it in us to be brave enough to be kind, even if it means sacrificing our popularity? Our comfort? Our time? Every time we choose to remind someone, and ourselves, who and Whose we are… we are clinging to what is good.
