As we cleaned up my parents' home after they had both passed away, I came across the Grace Family Bible. This was clearly a special book that had been handed down through the generations.
Seeing this old Bible for the first time in many years gave me an instant flashback to my childhood when I discovered our family Bible on one of Mum and Dad’s shelves for the first time. I remembered sitting on the couch, the Bible resting on my knees—in fact, it totally covered my legs! I opened it up, and there on the front page was a list of names. This list went back to the early 1800s, identifying when people were born, married and even when they died. The final name on the list was my dad’s: Arthur William Thomas Grace, born January 31, 1927!
Seeing this list again reminded me of the SBS show Who Do You Think You Are? The premise of this show is that we discover our identity by tracing our family history. This is one way we can explore who we are, but truly understanding our identity requires more than a list of names. A fundamental question in discovering who we truly are is: Who are we referring to when we use the personal pronoun I?
"Human nature is so changeful," says one philosopher, "and so subject to swiftly alternating moods, that when I say ‘I,’ I’m not always sure which ‘I’ I am talking about."
Who is the real you? Who is the real person that one sees when looking into the mirror? Is it the person who appears to be kind and encouraging at work but, upon arriving home, uses more harsh words than kind ones with their spouse or children?
Is it the person who politely lets others go ahead in a queue but then, when cut off while driving, falls into a fit of road rage?
The truth is, the same person can exhibit many different versions of themselves. A challenging yet necessary question is: Who is the person others refer to when they say you, and whom do you mean when you say I?
This is not a new dilemma. Aristotle claimed that "there were six different Aristotles." Faustina the Younger, a Roman Empress, declared, "Two souls, alas, dwell in this breast of mine." Ernest Renan, the French author, admitted, "I am two people; one part of me laughs while the other part of me cries."
The New Testament apostle Paul wrote in the Book of Romans, Chapter 7:15: "For what I want to do, I do not do." And then in verse 24, he lamented, "What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body?"
Some might try to explain this as a dual personality, but these elements exist within all of us.
However, all is not lost. The real you, I believe, is not the person others see, nor even the person you see, but the person God knows and sees. He knows the real you and recognises your true potential.
This is the truth our community seeks to proclaim and focus on. This is why we say, "Through the provision of Christian education, students can know their God-given potential."
It is this truth we want each student to know, live with and live by. It is this truth that will enable their lives to flourish in the potential God has placed within each and every one of them.
May this be the experience of each student, staff member and parent within our community.