February 16

“Our great slogan today is self-expression, and in the right sense of the word it is a genuine aim.  But it is useless to talk about self-expression until we have got a self to express and we are all the time confronted by the question, which of our thousand possible selves shall we express?.....The primary issue after all is how to get a rightly fashioned life that is truly worth expressing.”  Rufus Jones, 1933, Daily Readings from Quaker Writings, 2/16

I was in my 30’s before I realized that I didn’t have a self to express.  My self was so tied up in what others wanted me to be that to surrender my self to God felt impossible since I didn’t even possess it.  I eventually cut all those strings attached to my self and found who I really was.  But it did not bring automatic surrendering of that self.  I found that I liked her and to give her up just as I’d found her seemed unnatural. So God had to do what He always does:  show me just how insufficient my self is.  Rufus Jones is correct in saying that the only self worth expressing is the rightly fashioned one.  This is what I finally woke up to.  It’s the life of Christ in me that is worth expressing.  This is my new, redeemed self.  The self that is worthy of being expressed.  The self that will bring me pleasure instead of heart ache.  The self that can be loved without being led into pride or self-centeredness.   The self that gladly expresses the life of the rightly fashioned One.

“For God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.”  Philippians 2:13