Now that I'm dead in the middle of my life (I'm 35! Yikes!), I often ponder what it means to be...well, me. Who am I really? My life is absolutely chock full of great stories. If you know me personally, you also know that I LOVE to tell these stories! I get great pleasure in making others smile, even if it is due to my own misfortune or silliness.
I could tell you a thousand things about my life, and all of them and all of them are what make me, me. Who would you say that I am if I asked you? What do you know about me? What do you remember about me?
Growing up I developed a wonderful sense of humor. This incredible sense of humor fell right in line with my ability to do imitations. If you have spent at least ten minutes with me at some point in your life, you can testify that at I love to make people laugh, and I usually do this through imitating someone. As a matter of fact, I was so good at imitations growing up, that if I had a nickel for every time someone told me "you should be on Saturday Night Live" I would be a millionaire! I started out as a kid imitating Rich Little, who himself was imitating famous people. I would sit and listen to his tapes (yes tapes. You know, reels, tape, the whole bit) and memorize them and then perform them in front of my family. I remember on one occasion my grandmother was laughing so hard that she literally fell out onto the floor! I wasn't sure what was funnier, my imitations or her rolling around on the floor!
But, I am also more than a comedian. I'm a musician. Some of you may know that I went to college (go ahead and say it, "the first time"...yeah yeah, I flunked out. See...what ha happen wuz...) after high school, I went on a full scholarship to play the piano and for voice. I am a very accomplished pianist. My small claim to fame is that I've never lost a piano competition. I love to tell the story about a piano competition I went to when I was 14. I was playing an extremely hard composition for this competition. Right in the middle of my performance, I totally forgot my left hand. I kept playing my right hand for about 2 lines of music until I realized where I was with my left hand and I picked it back up again. The judges gave me a 99, a 98, and a 100. One of the judges remarked, "I have seen many people make mistakes while playing piano, but it takes a true musician to play better after the mistake than before the mistake."
In addition to these things, I've worked many a job in my lifetime. I'm roamed the halls of hospitals, restaurants, schools, and churches. I've worked as a college minister, a high school minister, a middle school minister, a co-pastor, and just about every other job in a church with the exception of head pastor, but even then I've been known to preach! I've been fairly good at all these jobs too. I'm a fairly smart fellow, so I tend to pick up on how to do something quickly.
I'm a father, I'm a brother, and I'm a son (also a joker, a smoker, a midnight...oh nevermind). Some have probably called me a son of something else! But even after all these things - who am I? What's my most important accomplishment? What's my lasting memory? Am I a comedian? Am I a piano player? A father, a son? What will people say about me when I am no more?
So, I ask myself, who am I? I have but one answer - I am His. I am a child of God. I find myself in Him and in Him alone. I stand in His grace, mercy, and love for me. My funny stories, my accomplishments, my musicality, my jobs...all of these pale in comparison to who I am in God's eyes. He loves me. He cares for me. He never stops loving. Even when I'm not funny, even when I make mistakes and forget to use both of my hands to show God's love, He still loves. See, God doesn't care if we forget our left hand. What God wants is for us to play better after our mistakes than when we did before them. That is when we will truly know who we are.
