Who Are You at Your Best?

What quality do you embody when you’re at your best? This question was posed to me a few weeks ago, and I felt overwhelmed with options. This question is both reflective and aspirational. When was I last at “my best” and how did I know? What do I hope to embody when I’m at my best in the future?

We were only allowed to pick one quality, so I landed on “generous.” At my best, I’m generous with my thoughts toward others and myself. I’m generous with my words and quick to listen and expect the best from others. I’m generous with my time, my money, and whatever I have to spare. At my best, there is less of me and more of God’s generous grace. Unfortunately, it’s impossible for me to point to one moment in my life when I was as generous as I’d like to be. My choice was certainly aspirational. I’m committed to cultivating my generous spirit and hopefully, day by day, I will see growth.

Howard Thurman wrote that there is an essentially unfinished element to life, and so it’s impossible to point to one moment in life where we embodied all that we hope to be. In the face of our shortcomings, we can’t resign to them and say that life is fixed and things cannot change. The fundamental commitment of the Christian life, says Thurman, is to fully commit (to say “yes”) to the Kingdom of God. Whatever “yes” we make, we do so generously and with full commitment. Your commitment to be who God created you to be, no matter how small or insignificant it may feel, is valuable and worth pursuing with fervor. We get to make choices about that for which we are willing to stand and that against which we stand.

I listened to one of Howard Thurman’s lectures (which feels more like a sermon) this morning. You can listen to it here and I’ve included my favorite part:

“Therefore, if where you sit this morning, you are saying to yourself that the tasks of life are so big and you are so little, that if you are saying that what is required is so great and what you have to give is so insignificant, if you are saying that this is the kind of world in which only a certain select persons are instruments in the hands of the living vitality, of the living energy of the living God, may I suggest to you that where are you are– if you are able to yield the nerve center of your consent to something which, to you, as you are, is more important even than whether you live or die, then yield to it.

And let the vast creative movement of the living spirit of the living God course through you at the point of your commitment. And your strength is magnified. Your qualities become enlarged. And what you are able to do becomes not a sacrifice but a sacrament. And this, this is the basis of the Christian doctrine, which insists that the heart and the mind of man must be surrendered to the Kingdom of God. And all else flows from the absolutism of that kind of commitment.”

Who are you at your best? How can you commit to creating and embracing that version of yourself?

Text copyright © 2023 Grace Woodward. All rights reserved.