We live regularly with the question of whether or not we are OK. And, most of our time is spent seeking the answer to this question from those around us. But, even with each validation, we are dropped off at the bus-stop asking it again. Am I still OK? What about the last thing I did, or didn't do? Where does that leave me now. And, in the end, we are exhausted by the endlessness of the affirmation we seek.
Exhausting this method, though, isn't bad. It leaves us looking for something else and moves us towards the understanding that ultimately we cannot be validated enough by others...because they were not designed to validate us. Our only real validation comes from God. He is the one who created (authored) us...made us to be what we are. And with God, we are not OK...on our own merits. We are not who we were made to be. We have simply screwed things up, over and over and over. And, we are not OK. Perhaps our deepest sense of this is what keeps us constantly looking for another opinion...from others.
A surprising (and relieving) truth is that we can be OK with God after all. Because He has offered us forgiveness, if we seek it. He is the one who constantly invites us back to what He made us to be. And, in seeking this forgiveness, we discover that He is the only one who can answer our deepest question. We are OK, because of what He has done for us, for our un-OK-ness. And, when we realize this, we are finally free to not get off at all the old bus-stops. We are free to live with a new answer, a freeing answer, to our human question.
