Where Are You From?

It has been many years since I have been in India, but in a few short weeks I’ll be boarding a flight to return. Return home? It’s strange to say but I can’t escape the reality of it: no, I am not returning home. I will be returning not as a resident immigrant but as a tourist which is a tough pill to swallow.

For many folks where we are from plays a large part in our identity. In India I was from America and when in America I was from India. Growing up it was funny how when we would periodically visit America my parents would be returning home, then at the end of the visit my brothers and I would be returning home. Of course now, having spent my adult life in Pennsylvania, married a Pennsylvania woman and having all my kids born here has made me a Pennsylvanian. I have put down roots. I’m an American, a Pennsylvanian now, though a piece of my heart will always belong to India.

Where are you from? An often asked question that is actually more complex to answer than you might think. Try it out…Is it where you were born? Is it where you were raised as a child? Or when you moved and where you lived as a teenager? Or is it the town you have been living in as an adult? Or did you move around a whole bunch and come from a region, a state or a province? Maybe your identity is not actually tied to where you are from. Is it your profession? Being a parent? Being a husband or wife? Being an athlete? Cheering for a team? Your race? A political party? The clothes you wear? Your hobbies? Your personality? It’s likely a combination of a bunch of these things and more.

For me, my identity was bound up in where I was from. As I said, in India I strongly identified as an American. But once I came to America I strongly identified with India. However you want to phrase it: finding, discovering, creating, placing etc…your identity, it is a tall task that we expect of young people. As our identity forms we often begin to answer the question of who we are by tying together a bunch of temporal things or past experiences.

Think of it this way: You are out at sea with your own little boat. And let’s say you were so far out to sea you lost sight of land and you don't know how to navigate by the stars. You are in a tiny little boat and don’t know what to do, it's scary but you are trying to make a plan and just need a reference point. Thankfully, you see a bigger boat in the distance so you start to follow it, it becomes your point of reference and provides you with some security because you know you are not alone out in the deep ocean. Then after a short time you see a bigger boat and decide to follow that one even though it is going in a different direction than the other one. It looks stronger and more able to help you if there were to be a problem. After following various different boats you meet a flotilla of smaller boats just like yours, no one knows where to go but everyone drifts together so no one really feels lost. Maybe your new group of boats starts to follow an ocean liner. But a storm hits and the ocean liner and some of the little boats sink and yours is separated from the group. What then? You are hopelessly lost, even worse than before. Unless you see some land. Your eyes are straining and just when you start to give up hope you see land on the horizon! And you fix your eyes on that land and never lose sight of it. It is your immovable reference point and as long as you can see it you may drift and sail far out but it will never move and you will know where you are.

People can spend a lifetime trying to find that immovable reference point. Anything that we place our entire identity in will sink or float away unmoored and leave us empty and lost. There are many wonderful things that make up who we are but they are all just pieces and not a whole and certainly not dependable enough to last every storm or shifting wind that comes our way. The only things in this world that can weather the storms that will inevitably swirl around us are actually not of this world. We need to look beyond ourselves and beyond our world to find something that can’t be sunk by something in this world.

So who are you? Where are you from?

I am not Indian or Pakistani or American. Sure, it's a part of who God made me to be and allowed me to experience, but ultimately my citizenship is in Heaven and I belong to Jesus and He paid the price for my sin so that I could be a citizen of Heaven and that I could be a child of God, adopted into His big, wide, welcoming family. And that offer is for you readers as well. Jesus is the only point of reference that we can find in this vast ocean. As much as I have my reference point in Christ, I am still often tempted to follow another ship that interests me and they begin to pull my eyes from the land. I also miss many of the ships that I used to follow and I mourn the loss of some ships that sank along the way. Many of these ships are good things. But as a man once told my wife and I, “good things don’t make good gods.” But Jesus is not going to drift and He is not going to change. He will remain. So once you catch sight of Him never look away, keep Him in your gaze and no matter the storms, winds or other ships that cross our path you won’t be lost. Rejoice in and enjoy the unique things that make you who you are but do it in reference to that which does not change.

I’m excited to visit India next month. I’ll do it with great joy. Then I’ll return home to my family with great joy. Because my identity is not where I am from. It is in belonging to Jesus.

Until next time! Safe travels friends,

Seth.

P.S. If you appreciate or enjoy the work I am doing at Marvelous India, feel free to say thank you by buying me a cup of chai!

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