A message from Pastor Matthias –
I read a blessing by Rev. Emily DeTar Birt the other morning that contained this line that just walloped me with its beauty and truth: “You are so much more than all the stories you tell about yourself.” Too often we have to reduce things to their simplest version. Give me the headline because there isn’t time to read the whole story. This is sometimes borne out of necessity: our brains can only process and retain so much information.
But it can also work against us, chopping down immensely complex things in ways that lose important nuance, beauty, mystery, and messiness. We turn things into black – and – white binaries where God means for us to see the full spectrum of color. This is true when we aim our reductionism at others, equating a person with their most salient trait or two in our mind. This can be true when we look at our own selves: we believe a Cliff’s Notes version of the vast volumes that make us up. So in the vein of that blessing, I would remind you:
You are more than your worst day and lowest moment.
You are more than the baddest mistake you have made.
You are not the meanest comment someone has made to you.
You are not reducible to any one label or identifier.
You get to be all that you are, in all the glory that is you, even if some of it seems contradictory.
You are a wonderful and complex and constantly healing and growing human being, made in the beloved image of a loving Creator.
Easter blessings,
Pastor Matthias