The prompt for last Friday was "self".

The initial thoughts and meanderings were, methinks, prelude to dealing with what is actually on my mind.

Who am I? What am I? Do I matter?

I look at myself with pride.

I look at myself with loathing.

The truth is somewhere in between.

Professor Neal Plantinga told us, "Against all pride, we are but creatures; against all false humility, we are creatures of God."

Not only am I created by God, I am loved by God, as I am, pride and loathsomeness and all. Says the Apostle Paul, "But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." (Romans 5:6)

Years ago (before a lot of my watchers on DeviantArt were born), The Navigators got me started memorizing scripture. The first two verses in their Topical Memory System are II Corinthians 5:17 and Galatians 2:20, on the topic "New life in Christ".

"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!"

"I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in my. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me."

As Psalm 95 says,

Come, let us bow down in worship,
let us kneel before the Lord our Maker;
for he is our God
and we are the people of his pasture
the flock under his care.

How wonderfully strange it is, that this messed up, mixed up self should be loved by God. We call it grace.

So much for prelude.

Along the way to being a month shy of my 66th birthday I have learned that I am good at far too many things, and not good at all at a bunch of others. I am an excellent mentor and a dismal personnel manager. I am good with networks and computers and websites but will happily pay someone else to fix my car. I am a superb team player and a dud of an entrepreneur. I can read and sing and preach and pray. I can write a coherent English sentence and figure out ones that are not. I've done quite well flying helicopters and paddling canoes. I like maps. Put me in a PC flight simulator and I'll crash it every time. I divide by zero just see how the calculator handles the error. I have a good eye for photography and form and how things fit together.

I am not very good with money. I consider it a necessary nuisance. It's handy to have but it's not how I keep score. Usually. I have done my share of dumb things with it.

I am mostly well behaved, but I know all too well the darkness within.

I am plagued with a nagging sense if inadequacy, of not measuring up to what I think I should be or should do.

I should listen more to the answers I already know.

Enough for now.