Be yourself!

Be yourself! Be what God is seeing in you, what God has put into you and is unfolding in you. Each one of us not only important but indispensable to the whole, the big picture. We are so very precious to God, who made us in the first place. But, spoiler alert, God - Life, Truth, Love - makes us continuously individual, dignified, creative, promising, spiritually, as an idea. Man expresses God. Man is as big as God. We find out more about who we are by finding out more about God. God is our life-guarantee for progress, unfoldment, eternal promise, and shining individuality.

God is not to be found in the world, in what others think, in the choir of opinions or perceptions. The world's models presented to us everywhere, in every culture, country, on every continent, are models of thought, often cheap models presenting man as instinct driven, uninterested in individuality, and subject to the changing moods of our times. Some models are empowered by tradition, others by the current state of mass thinking, others by our peers, by social media and the myriad ways our thought and attention are being reached and diverted.

What we can see is that God wants us to be models ourselves - not squished into worldly models, inferior models. God wants us as we are: Good, upright, thankful, free. Generous, grateful, on our way with joy. The worldly models are simply too small, and they never fit.

This is Paul's counsel - it was wise and timely 2000 years ago and always will be:

"Don’t let the world around you squeeze you into its own mould, but let God re-mould your minds from within, so that you may prove in practice that the plan of God for you is good, meets all his demands and moves towards the goal of true maturity." (Romans 12: 2. J.B. Phillips Translation)