Who am I ?

Since this is my first column, it occurs to me that some might be asking, “Who’s this?” Seems a reasonable question and even Biblical as we are encouraged to “test the spirits.” Sadly, however, I fear that in our modern way of thinking, “testing” people has come to mean putting their resumes up for scrutiny. Did he go to the right seminary? Has she written an armload of books? What kinds of numbers does he draw on Sunday? We most especially use this method for finding God’s person for our church leadership positions. We have come to assume that God wouldn’t think of sending us someone without the right credentials.

If you are looking for these kinds of vindications to know of what “spirit” I am, you will be sadly disappointed. Like Gideon, it’s easier to point out how I am from among the smallest and the weakest. I graduated from a high school in a city in West Virginia of which most have never heard. (Actually, most Americans can’t name more than one or two cities in West Virginia as it is as one author put it, “one of the last great American frontiers.”) I graduated from a college even further back in the mountains, a school of less than 1,000 students which taught religion and philosophy classes, which I took in the Liberal Arts tradition, but I wasn’t a religion/philosophy major. I’m actually a creative writing major who has penned thousands of essays and dramas and articles, most of which have never been published or were published/produced in venues that you probably wouldn‘t know. Mostly our family, my husband, daughter and myself, has been in small towns and small churches where we have contributed as the Lord has led, and we honestly haven’t minded any of that.

So by what right or authority would I speak to you? The same authority that sent a fruit grower to Judah. The same authority that called a former tax collector to write a gospel. The same authority that chooses to use “the small things” to teach those who believe themselves to be wise. I speak based upon what I have learned from God. This is the only authority by which any of us should desire to accomplish anything. It is also the hope of the gospel, that I don’t have to achieve the status of “somebody” in order to do something really great, because really great things aren’t done by me in the first place. They are done by God through me.