The Wisdom of the I Am

This morning, I was listening to Ya Hey by Vampire weekend. The chorus rattled around in my head all morning (“through the fire, through the flame, you won’t even say your name, only I Am that I Am”). At a worship service, the preacher mentioned our identity and how it’s not found in what we do. Although I’ve heard it and believed it for years–we are human beings, not human doings–in that moment it hit me between the eyes: we, too, are “I Am.”

Our “I Am” is rooted, grounded, found first, in the Great I Am. Of all the ways in which God could have referred to Godself, the term “I am” was chosen… not “I do” or “I make” or “I accomplish”… but “I am.” Even when this dude was insisting on a name–come on, how are they going to believe me? Give me your name… [I mean, it’s possible, even likely that Moses was begging for a name because that’s what you did back then–if you had a particular deity’s name, you could call on that deity and get them to do your bidding…but I digress.] God said nope. I Am that I Am. And this is our true identity as well. I am.

The essence of who we are is our being, not our doing. The one who created us in his and her image, the one who knew us and loved us before we were formed in our mothers’ wombs. Before our educations, careers, experiences, relationships, and histories defined us,… I Am. I Am gave us our identity and I Am is our identity. We are. I am. May we find our identity in God’s I am.