Identity Restructured

I’m interrupting the Campfire Song series with a poem I wrote a year ago when I was adjusting to living in a new place among a new church community. It still fits now. The more deeply you get to know something, the more you see you don’t understand. I am amazed over and over at the beautiful life God gives me, and at the same time broken over and over by His merciful hand that is always shaping me into more of His image.

Identity Restructured

When I have forgotten, forgotten

who I am,

and the sky spins rainbows

I can’t understand,

I sit by the shore in the shadow of a

mountain, broken,

the ages scattering spray—

and where am I?

I have forgotten, forgotten

who I am,

lost in a whirlpool, tossed

on the sand,

gulping incredible draughts

from wild fountains,

longing for endless day—

and who am I?

Speck, of the earth begotten:

who I am

is a mystery. Where I am: a puzzle

lost in a promised land.

Woman of wandering longings,

never amounting

to much. Formed of the clay—

by God. Am I?

Do I recall now? Begotten, begotten

of I AM;

spun of the thoughts of ages,

held by a heavenly hand.

Can it be true? I remember,

faintly, the calling of daughter…

Who is the Caller? What does He say?

“Fear not. It is I.”

Rebecca Weber

Undone

My life for the last little while could be summed up in one word: brokenness. Several years ago, people used to tell me that I was mature for my age. Maybe I was. But I think I was holding together an image I wanted people to see, while being unwilling to admit (even to myself) how deep the needs of my soul were.

God’s mercy has been revealing those needs to me lately. I see brokenness within and a broken world without. When the things I have desperately held together fall apart, I see with greater clarity: I am nothing. Christ is everything. Only in Him is any hope to be found. Let me fall into Him, where I am put back together by grace for the praise of His glory.

I have always been a visionary sort of person. Trying to figure out the world and figure out God’s ways. Seeking the heights. Pursuing my dreams. But my earthly dreams need to break and be fitted into the way of Christ. Sometimes I don’t need to know what God is doing; I just need to come to Him and be still.

This poem expresses some of that. I wrote it awhile ago, but have perhaps lived into it just a little more by now.

Undone

Lord, I have been a Jew, intent
On seeking for a sign;
In search of some significance,
Some earthly sun to shine.
Lord, I have been a Jew, blind-eyed
And seeking for a sign.

Lord,  I have been a Greek, and sought
The wisdom of the wise,
To puzzle over mysteries
Half-hidden from my eyes.
Lord, I have been a Greek, one bent
On being worldly-wise.

Lord, now I come—a fool, and weak—
To know Christ crucified;
Here wisdom and the power of God
I find—exceeding wide.
With joy I come—a fool, and weak—
And find Christ crucified.

Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.

1 Corinthians 1:22-25 NIV