Sinking Sand

I ordered hair extensions a few days ago. Long hair extensions. Different from what I would usually wear. Naturally, I have been very excited and have been impatiently anticipating its arrival. I have pictured my face with me wearing these extensions. My face looks quite on fleek in the picture painted in my mind (but I digress). From the moment I placed the order, I have diligently tracked the delivery process. Unfortunately, the delivery man (or woman) came yesterday and I was not home. He/she left a note that delivery would be attempted again today. You can only imagine my disappointment when delivery was neither attempted nor completed today. 

After a couple of hours of being in a considerably fouler mood than I’d been earlier in the day, I felt the Holy Spirit steering me towards a more cheerful disposition. I know something as insignificant as hair extensions should, in an ideal world, not have the power to put one in a less than cheerful mood but this is one of those days where a seemingly insignificant “life event” turns into deep reflections.  Why had my disappointment been so profound when I realised that I would not in fact be running my fingers through 20 inches of soft, silky Brazilian hair today?

The answer came to me in a song. “My hope is built on nothing less that Jesus blood and righteousness. On Christ the solid Rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand”.

Life happens and it can be so easy to get carried away with the process of life. Thankfully, I was sensitive enough to the Holy Spirit to fix my focus. As I mentioned earlier however, this turned into a day of deep reflections.

As human beings, we always feel the need to identify with something. A lot of times, we get our sense of identity from the things/views we identify with. In Nigeria, for example, we have several tribes and a lot of people derive their sense of identity from the tribe they were born into. Another example would be people that believe in Zodiac signs and tie everything that happens in their lives to the positioning of the moon and heavenly bodies on the day they were born. These people tie their identity to their zodiac signs. 

People also identify with life experiences and would usually gravitate towards other people with the same or similar experiences. In my case, I was looking forward to identifying with the group of people that wear long hair extensions and truth be told, I would have derived a certain satisfaction from being connected to that group.

I remember listening to a sermon by John Piper on identity (or something related to identity). In this sermon, he asked the congregation not “to be avant garde, or progressive” but to be “solid, like a rock built on a rock”. I played it back a couple of times just to listen to this one line.

In Matthew 7: 24-27, Jesus tells us the parable of the wise man and the foolish man. The wise man built his house on a rock and the house stood firm through adverse weather conditions but the foolish man built his house on sand and the house could not withstand rain or floods or wind. There is nothing wrong with identifying with different groups of people or feeling connected to people with similar experiences. There is everything wrong with letting these groups of people or life experiences define us and dictate to us how we see ourselves. The main reason is that anything outside of Christ will never completely meet our expectations.

We are created in the image and likeness of God to bring glory to God. There is always an underlying motive of bringing glory to ourselves when we try to find our identity in anything outside of Christ. When these other things fail us, we tend to have an identity crisis. Finding our identity in Christ and living according to what we know of ourselves in Christ guarantees us safety. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. He is steadfast and unwavering. His views do not change to please anyone and because we walk in the knowledge of who we are in Him, we also have these characteristics. We become as "solid" as He is.

As human beings, we will definitely have times where we shift our focus and want to latch on to something else to define us. Thankfully, just like He did for me, the Holy Spirit is always ready to remind us who and whose we are and how solid our foundation in Christ is.