A Fowl Identity
July 2nd, 2008 Posted in Uncategorized
I’ve changed my identity! No, I’m still “Pastor Dave” and am the husband of Diann, the father of Julie and Dan, grandpa, and all around nice guy. The part of my identity that’s changed is that I am no longer a chicken farmer! That’s right. After having raised chickens as a hobby for at least a quarter of a century I’ve switched to raising white homing pigeons! Why the switch? It wasn’t that I was fed up with an identity of a fowl kind (just couldn’t resist one more chicken pun). The fact is, I was trying to raise both chickens and pigeons in my coop but they didn’t co-exist very well so I opted to keep the pigeons.
You may not realize it, but this is quite a switch in identity for me. I can’t tell you how many chicken items I’ve been given as gifts. Everyone who knows me well at all knows I raise chickens. It has always made for great small talk. Now, all of a sudden, I don’t have chickens! I actually gave it serious thought before I packed up the chickens and took them to the animal auction in Dundee, Michigan.
We all have much about us which is part of our identity. Some of it is good, and some of it isn’t. The good parts of our identity we want to keep, but the bad parts we should be willing to let go of - but do we?
In some strange way we can hold on to the bad parts of our identity just because they’re so familiar. “I’ve always been loud,” or “I find it hard to forgive people,” or “I never seem to be able to stick with anything,” or “I’m always running late,” or “I’ve always struggled with that addiction, or “______ ” and you fill in the blank.
How would people react if we really tried to reform ourselves in a given area? It might be very uncomfortable for us if they called attention to how we are no longer the way we’ve been for so long. In a broader sense we’ve been sinners all of our lives, and there’s a perverse sense in which it’s become part of our identity. The old self we know may be more comfortable to live with than a new self we have yet to meet. And then there’s the fact that many old friends may actually like the old “us” better! That’s part of the price of following Christ (who is always about the business of making us new).
Actually, I’m really enjoying seeing my white pigeons flying overhead in the morning, their white feathers glowing in the morning’s light. The chickens never looked that good! A change in identity can be good, especially when that identity change makes us more like the One who made us!
Dave
