I'm working ACU Leadership Camps this summer. The theme of our high school camp, Kadesh, is "Identity." The theme centers on the idea that our identity is found in being the beloved of Christ. Sounds pretty simple, right?
Our staff spent the entire week before camp started prepping for the events that we put on for the campers. My friend, Mitch, and I were put in charge of one particular event that involved writing some poetry. The event basically consists of a group of people reciting poems that they've written about lies that satan makes them believe about their identities. At the beginning of prep week, we had zero poets and needed at least four. We were getting pretty nervous. To be honest, we didn't think anyone would have any interest in (or the talent for) writing these poems.
The day that we needed our poems arrived and Mitch and I waited to evaluate our potential poets. Six girls and three guys walked in, poems in hand. Needless to say, we were thrilled to immediately have more options than we needed. We sat down in a circle and had each person read his or her poem.
The first poem is about a little girl whose father beat her mother, who told her she wasn't pretty enough, who told her she could never do enough to make him proud, who abandoned his family.
The second is about a guy who felt empty, whose facade says that he's happy, who smiles enough and laughs enough to make you believe that everything is okay.
The third is about a girl who has a little brother. Her little brother had a fatal illness for years. She got put on the back burner. She was expected to be strong. No emotions, no needs, no nothing. Just her brother, all the time.
The fourth is about a girl who grew up in a wonderful family, who had many talents, who had many friends, who had many reasons to be content, and who abused her body with an eating disorder.
The fifth is about a girl who survived leukemia, who doesn't understand why she survived and so many others don't, who doesn't understand why she had to experience something so brutal in the first place.
The sixth is about a girl who is enmeshed in American culture, in a church tradition, in media that says all she will ever be is weak. Because she is a woman.
The seventh is about a guy who made the decision to drink underage and drive, who got arrested, who is still reaping the consequences of that. Who believes that that one mistake is the only man he'll ever be.
The eighth is about a guy who is going into ministry when he graduates from college, who is passionate about the Lord, who deeply loves and serves people, and who suffered from an addiction to pornography for years.
The ninth, and last, is about a girl who wants to be perfect, who is defined by her achievements, who believes that if she didn't have her achievements, no one would have any reason to love her at all.
We listened to poem after poem. After the last poem ended, we sat and stared at each other for awhile. The weight of all those lies was almost tangible. I wasn't expecting nine people to walk in the room and lay their hearts on the line. In that moment, I felt so vulnerable. I could feel the tears pressing against my eyelids. These were my friends, my fellow counselors. So many heartbreaking experiences, but not very much life lived, yet.
I know their hearts, I know their struggles, I know how much they love the Lord. The part that's so hard to swallow is the fact that satan knows all those things as well as I do. He knew exactly how to attack every single one of us. If he chooses the right lies, it's so easy to ditch the belief that we're the beloved of Christ and succumb to his lies.
Each of us have been delivered from the things that we wrote about in our poems. But it's still so easy to let the past creep in and redefine us, stripping away our worth and making us into whatever it wants us to be. This is dangerous, because the past will define who we are in our future, if we can't move past the past.
We are the beloved of Christ in our past, present, and future. He rose and conquered the grave so we could wear that name. The lies in those poems already hung with Him on the cross. Continuing to live in the midst of those lies would be death. But “death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?”
After we prayed and thought about it that way, the poems stung a little less. We are the beloved of Christ.
Father,
Thank you for calling us Your beloved, despite the ways that we fail. Thank you for being strong where we are weak. Thank you for letting us find our identity in who You are. We love you.
Amen.
Erin E. Daugherty, Abilene Christian University
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