You are who you are...

Normally, I only post the spiritual stuff to my spiritual blog at http://joyfulDisciple.blogspot.com/

However, since my quote of the day blended so nicely with everything else going on the last couple of days, I thought I would cross post to my fun, everyday life journal at http://cartierobert.livejournal.com/

Last night I was contemplating how I got to where I am and it occurred to me that I have kind of taken the easy path than make any hard decisions. I was not the person I was meant to be, but the person my decisions and circumstances made me.

This morning my character study was on Lot. Lot was much the same. He always took the easy way, rather than make hard decisions (when he made any at all.) I typically have been a lot (ha) like Lot. Interestingly, Lot is considered by New Testament Christians as a man of faith despite the very wrong directions his life took, so perhaps there is hope for us all yet.

Streisand’s quote below speaks about the very thing I was contemplating last night as well.

“A human being is only interesting if he's in contact with himself. I learned you have to trust yourself, be what you are, and do what you ought to do the way you should do it. You have got to discover you, what you do, and trust it.”

—Barbra Streisand (b. 1942), singer, actress

This is the idea which was also been brought up in my meditations from Reconciling Journey. The following are passages from the Bible which reiterate this concept that we are what we were meant to be (at least if we try rather than let life decide for us). God has a reason for who we are. We often forget about these words as we try to reconcile faith and being GLBT and focus on trying to reason the other passages that people try to clobber us with.

Isaiah 45:9-12

Woe to you who strive with your Maker, earthen vessels with the potter! Does the clay say to the one who fashions it, “What are you making”? or “Your work has no handles”? Woe to anyone who says to a father, “What are you begetting?” or to a woman, “With what are you in labor?”

Thus says the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, and its Maker: Will you question me about my children, or command me concerning the work of my hands? I made the earth, and created humankind upon it; it was my hands that stretched out the heavens, and I commanded all their host.

Psalm 139

O Lord, you have searched me and known me.

You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from far away.

You search out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways.

Even before a word is on my tongue, O Lord, you know it completely.

You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me.

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is so high that I cannot attain it.

Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence?

If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.

If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,

even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast.

If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light around me become night,”

even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you.

For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; that I know very well.

My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.

Your eyes beheld my unformed substance. In your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed.

How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them!

I try to count them—they are more than the sand; I come to the end—I am still with you.

O that you would kill the wicked, O God, and that the bloodthirsty would depart from me—

those who speak of you maliciously, and lift themselves up against you for evil!

Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord? And do I not loathe those who rise up against you?

I hate them with perfect hatred; I count them my enemies.

Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts.

See if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.