New Year’s hope: May we remember our identities

It happens every year before and on Jan. 1. We wish each other “Happy New Year.”

For many years, I’ve silently wondered if the well-wisher just means “Have a good holiday,” or if he/she really means “Have a good year.” Maybe the greeting has a little bit of both wishes. I opt for “have a good year.”

But such a greeting implies a great many conditions: “Have a good year if your health holds up … if you keep your job … if your family stays healthy (or intact)…” if, if, if.

So my desire for you to have a good year is not conditioned with any wishful thinking. First let me remind you of Jim Wallis’ provocative definition of hope: “Hope is believing in spite of the evidence and watching the evidence change” (“The Politics of Soul”).

So instead of best wishes for the new year, I invite you (and me) to immerse ourselves in one basic hope: I hope we will each persistently remember our basic identities as children of God.

Re-member. That is, reconnect yourself constantly back into a new year’s journey that can change your life and change how you relate to the world around you.

Last week, I visited with a wonderful lady who is so thankful she is still alive at 90-plus years of age. She has had more than her share of difficult challenges through her life, but she has learned well to treasure that life.

At one point in our visit, she surprised me with a brief statement. After she mentioned she had had no significant church background, I asked how she had come to understand God as gracious and loving.

She said something to the effect of, “I don’t know. I’ve just always known.”

That kind of answer might not play well with those whose religious beliefs are based on adherence to certain religious formulas. But it played just fine with this pastor.

As I smiled at her sense of assurance about God’s presence in her life, I was reminded of a powerful and, frankly, stunning story I recently read in Marcus Borg’s “The Heart of Christianity.”

He tells of a couple with a 3-year-old girl. The mother was pregnant, and the little girl was excited about being a big sister.

When the parents brought her baby brother home from the hospital, the girl made an unusual request: She asked to be left alone with her new brother in his room, with the door shut.

They thought that a bit strange and were a little uneasy at leaving her alone with him. But then they realized they could hear everything via the baby monitor, so they could quickly get to the nursery if they sensed anything wrong.

As they listened on the baby monitor, the parents heard the girl’s footsteps moving across the room. They imagined her looking into the baby’s crib, and then they heard her say to her 3-day-old brother, “Tell me about God – I’ve almost forgotten.”

I involuntarily sucked in my breath when I first read that simple but very profound story.

The implications of that little girl’s statements are pretty staggering.

Is there truly some kind of pre-birth knowledge of God that we bring with us as we slip into this world? Do we have God-knowledge that we usually let slip from our consciousness but is lurking in what we call the subconscious?

I cannot dismiss that possibility. In fact, it is quite easy to embrace it.

It makes my favorite biblical journey even more exciting. Yes, I mean the journey taken by the prodigal son (Luke 15).

He was a young man totally empty, humiliated and defeated. At his lowest point, he “came to himself.”

What a powerful phrase! Whether we sink to the depths as he did, or play the dutiful child as his elder brother did, or live somewhere in between their choices, we always need moments to “come to ourselves.”

In those moments, the words of Henri Nouwen have a great ring of truth to them:

“The farther I run away from the place where God dwells, the less able I am able to hear the voice that calls me the Beloved; and the less I hear that voice, the more entangled I become in the manipulations and power games of the world” (“The Return of the Prodigal Son”).

When we almost forget what God is like – as the 3-year-old spiritual sage did – it’s because we’re disconnected. We’re separated not just from God, but also from those people and experiences that re-member us, that bring us back to the God who keeps waiting for us to reclaim our rightful relationship as children of God.

However it happens for you, and however often it needs to happen for you to make a difference, I hope your 2006 journey affords you many opportunities to embrace your deepest, prodigal self.

Know that self is where God resides in you, child of God.