A Season for the Spirit: Finding the Treasure Within Us

One of life's primary struggles is arguing with our own self-understanding of who we are. Christ tells through experience and the New Testament writers speak of our true identity in Christ; but we choose to recreate ourselves by our past, by our desired personalities, and our image of ourselves.

But there is a true center. "And unless we come to acknowledge and believe in this true center, we will continue to imagine that our public personalities or our image of ourselves is the whole truth of who we are."

I still recall a professor of mine reminding us all that the primary message that people need to hear is one of identity. Christ makes us into who we are because he is dwelling in the center of who we are. The other stuff that we place around it are obstacles meant to cover up fear of life and fear of death.

But this is only half of it. Again, many of us resort to the distorted belief that the centered life is reserved for the spiritual elite. But the "new being is not dangled in front of our eyes as some elusive goal to which we one day might attain if we struggle hard enough. It is already ours through the undeserved gift of Christ's indwelling."

Thomas Merton explained it by saying, "all we need is to experience what we already possess." "You start where you are and deepen what you already have and you realize that you are already there."


"Give me the simplicity to believe that the name of Jesus pronounced with love and adoration is more powerful than all my schemes for changing myself for the better."
- Martin L. Smith