Where we come from

It's always interesting to me how I try to think more highly of myself than I ought. I'd love to think that I'm somehow better, smarter, cleaner, more worthy than others. I don't know if it's natural to want to be special or something, but I know for me it is true.

I also know its not true. This is not in any way a reflection of how I feel about my own family, but rather the truth of me. I'm a sinner. I sin. I do things that I wish I didn't. I struggle with things that I wish I didn't. I react in ways that I should have outgrown long ago. But somehow God is changing me. God is making me new again. God is revealing himself in me as he changes my tastes, changes my ways. It's this part that I like and its this part that I'd like everyone to believe is the real me that has always been me... but it just ain't true.

But then none of us start so clean, so perfect. Look at Jesus. A boy born in a manager in a small town known for raising sheep (clean sheep mind you, but sheep nonetheless). A boy who grew up in the "blue collar" out of the way town called Nazareth. As it was said, "what good can come from Nazareth?" Even his lineage is not so clean. There's a prostitute in there plus plenty of other unsavory characters.

Where do we come from? It definitely impacts who we are, shapes us, forms us. But perhaps more important than where we come from, is where we are going and whose we are. If we are allowing God to form us, trying to obey and follow, trusting in Him, then perhaps that is what matters most.

I wonder how my own actions and identity would be different if I lived in that reality? A reality of anxiously expecting God to work in me, change me, form me, come to me, to us, to those who don't come from such great places.