You are Fabulous!

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our Light, not our darkness that frightens us. We ask ourselves ‘Who am I not to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you NOT to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightening about shrinking so that other people won’t feel sure around you. We were born to manifest the glory of God that is in us. It not just in some of us; it is in everyone. As we let our own Light shine we unconsciously give other persons permission to do the same.”
~Nelson Mandela
1994 Inaugural Speech

What an amazing statement this is! Someone send me this quote several years ago and the more that I thought about it, the more empowering its words became. I don’t think I’d ever heard anyone say as eloquently as Mandela how important it is to live into the goodness of God’s creation found in ourselves. This was in contrast to most of the messages I received as a child growing up in church about self-worth. All of them somehow went back to a discussion of humility—you couldn’t be a “good” Christian if you weren’t constantly saying “I’m such a bad person.”

While I don’t think that humility is a bad thing (we all need a dose of it now and again), I think often times that humility can masks other issues we have like fear, low self-esteem and disbelief in God’s good plans for all people. “Just being humble” can often times keep us in bondage from how God wants to use US. There is a time to admit you don't have the answers. There is a time to let others run on ahead of you. But there is also a time to speak up and proclaim the goodness of God known to you, knowing that it is a voice that the world NEEDS to hear.

It takes a lot of courage to be an individual … to know your own worth and follow your heart even if others discredit what you know to be true about yourself. But, the more I surround myself with people who are testimonies to exactly what Mandela is talking about, the more I believe that the LIGHT of God within each of us is truly powerful. When I am around individuals who actively seek to live authentically into the person God has created them to be (warts and all), I stand amazed and am encouraged to look deeper into my own soul and become my best person too.

I really like how Mandela ends his statement by saying that the glory of God is “not just in some of us; it is in everyone.” Exactly at this place is where humility comes in, I believe. For, we realize that we are not the best thing since fried chicken as my grandmother would say, but there are multitudes of persons who are in some way just like us, children created in the image of God we begin to see God in strange places.

This whole concept is something we’ve talked extensively about in my Cross Cultural Pastoral Care and Counseling class this semester. Dr. Esther Acolatse has told us on several occasions salvation could be summed up in what it means to restore humanity to its original intention as humanity once again…. We learn to have new vision to see and treat others with dignity and respect as children of God. I really like this idea because it forces me to examine the walls in which I’ve created even with my theology to keep some people in and others out. Is anyone up for some interfaith dialogue? Bring it on.

So, Mandela’s words are some that I hope will continue to stick with me for a while and I hope that as you read them again or for this first time today, they will be on your mind as well. Maybe just maybe we’ll begin (or continue) to live into the glorious selfhood called us, while at the same time we’ll take the opportunity to recognize the glory of God in our neighbor sitting next to us wherever this may be.