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I think a lot about identity: how we identify ourselves, others, places, feelings, and situations; what we allow or don’t allow ourselves to identify and why; the effects our language around a thing or person has in how we deal with it in the world.

I’ve come to the tentative conclusion that we only ever exist in community and in context. For example, I’m only short because I live in a world where the average adult human height is more than what I am.

It’s a bit like the old adage “if a tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound?” If suddenly there was a fully-formed human who had never met other humans, how would they identify – or would they?

Why is this in the pastor letter this week? Because part of our job as a community is to occasionally shake each other out of the illusion that the labels somehow define us instead of being tools for expression. Jacob lived with the label “heel-grabber” in our passage this last Sunday – something that felt like destiny to him because it had defined him since the moment he was born.

I wonder what labels were put on you and when? What’s been life-giving and life-draining?

May you know first the label “beloved!”

- Pastor Amber