Who am I? – I often wonder. Is it possible to live for years with someone and still not fully know or understand that person? Is it even possible to truly know and understand another? Or will the other be always a mystery? How does one bear the pain of not knowing or understanding the other, specially those that one loves?
Each person is unique. And in that uniqueness lies my inability to fully know and understand another. Likewise, in spite of my desire to be known and understood by another, I will never be fully known nor understood by others. There is the root of my aloneness – my uniqueness.
Alone does not mean being lonely; although being alone can easily become loneliness. It causes pain when I fail to understand people around me, specially those I love. It is painful when people dear to me cannot understand me. In the final analysis, there is only one person who can truly understand me because He alone knows me. There are times I do not even understand myself. My prayer time is not only to know God but also to know myself better.
My heart is aching and I make this hymn my prayer for today:
“You have searched me, Lord,
and you know me.
You know when I sit and when I rise;
you perceive my thoughts from afar.
You discern my going out and my lying down;
you are familiar with all my ways.
Before a word is on my tongue
you, Lord, know it completely.
You hem me in behind and before,
and you lay your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
too lofty for me to attain.
Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.
If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me
and the light become night around me,”
even the darkness will not be dark to you;
the night will shine like the day,
for darkness is as light to you.
For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed body;
all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
How precious to me are your thoughts, God!
How vast is the sum of them!
Were I to count them,
they would outnumber the grains of sand—
when I awake, I am still with you.”
Jesus and his disciples set out
for the villages of Caesarea Philippi.
Along the way he asked his disciples,
“Who do people say that I am?”
They said in reply,
“John the Baptist, others Elijah,
still others one of the prophets.”
And he asked them,
“But who do you say that I am?”
Peter said to him in reply,
“You are the Christ.”
Then he warned them not to tell anyone about him.
Mark 8:27-30