The Great Question

"Who am I, and why am I here?"

This one question has and continues to consume the lives of hundreds of people. Desperate to know who we are and to find the reason for life, we've filled ridiculously large history books with our effort to find the answer. And every time we think we’ve hit on the answer, another twisted belief system forms, leading thousands away from the truth.

Recently I did a fun Sunday school exercise where my teacher asked us to describe ourselves in three sentences. She wanted us to describe not what we looked like, but who we really were.

It was hopeless from the very beginning!

We scrambled through answers out loud, each time discarding them as not a description of who we really were. Some sample answers were things like ‘I’m blond’ which was discarded because even when our hair had turned gray, we would still be ourselves. Some mentioned what they liked to do, their preferences, but we threw those ideas out too. Eventually you would not be able to run track or be on the swim team anymore.

But after thinking about it, I realized the answer. It was the one thing that would never change about me. And I saw that looking into myself for answers, like people are so fond of doing, would never work.

Who do you ask if you want to know what a watch is? Or if you’re confused about what a piano is? Who do you ask if you want to know what anything is, really?

You ask the maker, the creator of that thing.

And God says that I am His chosen child. My identity is found in Him. Not in myself. So in knowing God better, I will know myself better. After all, we were made in His image!

And what something is is bound closely with what it was made for. Like a watch was made for telling time and a piano for making music, we were made to give God glory.

So who are we? We are children of God, made in His image and likeness.

And why are we here? We are here to give glory to God, and to enjoy fellowship with Him forever.



26 Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." 27 God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.

~Genesis 1:26-27