Right now I’m sitting in my office, looking out the window. The view is not what you’d expect; instead of skyscrapers and rushing cars, I see tall pine trees and running children. I work at Ligonier Camp and Conference Center, a summer camp in Western Pennsylvania, as the program director. This is my 11th summer at Ligonier Camp. At age ten, I showed up with my pillow and my best friend to spend two weeks at camp and since then there hasn’t been a summer without a trip to Ligonier. Over the years I’ve been a camper, a counselor-in-training, and a counselor, and this summer I was asked to be the program director. My job is to create memorable, fun experiences for kids. I run games and activities and dance parties and pool parties and all kinds of fun stuff, and I get paid for it. Doing all that in a place that I love and that has changed my life is such an incredible honor and blessing.
However, that’s how I’m feeling about five weeks into the job. When I first got to camp on the first day of training the summer, I was immediately overwhelmed. Nothing about this place has changed; it’s the same camp I went to when I was ten. But suddenly, camp seemed so much bigger. How was I going to be the program director? My responsibilities seemed to multiply before me…it wasn’t that I thought I would be bad at the job, but I felt so small.
Who am I to do this job, Lord?
What am I even doing here? Let me just be a counselor. That’s what I know.
In that time of questioning, I turned to scripture. Who else in God’s story has felt a deep sense of inadequacy? Who has asked of God, “Who am I?” There are plenty of those stories in the Bible, but I was drawn to the story of Moses and the burning bush in Exodus 3. As I read over this familiar story, I was struck by something fascinating. Whenever Moses questioned something about his calling, God responded with an assurance not about Moses’ character, but about His own.
When Moses asked, “Who am I?”
God responded: “I will be with you.”
When Moses asked, “What shall I tell them?”
God responded: “I am who I am.”
Living in this culture, we often wait for personal assurance; we constantly question our own adequacy and we want God to be our biggest cheerleader. We want Him to tell us nice things about why we are so qualified, or why He picked us for this calling. But God has shown countless times throughout scripture that He does not choose people for their own merits, but rather He displays His glorious character through our inadequacies. When I question who I am, He says, “I am who I am.” When I question my adequacy, He says, “I will be with you.” He is true to those characteristics, through and through. In the end, He doesn’t truly answer my actual question; instead, He reaches into the heart of my insecurity and affirms that He is powerful and present, and that He is God.
As I begin to process and prepare for the World Race, I am certain that I may find myself face-to-face with a huge, broken world, and I will ask God, “Who am I? What shall I tell them?” and the truth I will always cling to, turn to, rest in, will be this:
I am who I am, and I will be with you.
