I Am Somebody and I am Going Somewhere
Before Renee and I even started dating, Renee collected children's books in hopes that one day she could share them with her children. There is a message in having that kind of hope and faith, but I will not talk about it now. Nevertheless, her hope and faith have meant that we have a rather extensive collection of books for the children to read.
One is a book called You Are Special written by Max Lucado from "Focus On The Family." David happened to come across it from the collection and asked me to read it for the first time. After I read it, I began to remember something I heard about my Granddaddy Harold.
Before I get ahead of myself, let me give you a brief synopsis of the story. It is about an imaginary world where a woodcarver named Eli has created a bunch of puppet-like creatures called Wemmicks. The Wemmicks had developed a way of identifying the good and bad traits of each other by the placements of stars and dots.
Gold Stars were given to Wimmicks who are pretty, handsome or have lots of talent. Grey Dots were given to Wimmicks who are ugly and have no talent at all. Punchinello was a Wemmick who never received gold stars, but only dots. Without going into the entire story, Punchinello was extremely depressed about this until he was invited to go to the woodcarver Eli's house. It was there that Punchinello discovered that he might be special after all and it did not matter what others may think. I do not want to spoil any more of this story, but I will ask that you listen to the story by clicking here. I hope that you have heard the story, because you may not understand somethings I will be later talking about otherwise.
After I finished reading the story, I began to think other "Children's Stories" I learned as a child. The story about the woman at the well, where she said: "Come see a man!". The story about Zacchaeus and how he climbed a sycamore tree. Of course, we know that the tying factor in these stories is how Jesus chose the dregs of society and loved them enough to speak to them and tell them that they were loved. In short, they were special. That's when an old message my Grandaddy Harold used to preach occured to me. I never actually heard it, but I always heard about the title. "I am somebody, and I am going somewhere."
In the society that we live in today, we are primarily defined by a series of numbers and letters. I have a phone number, social security number, insurance number, bank number, house number, gas card number and three emails. For the most part, to the World, I am just a number. Not only that but much like the stories of the Wemmicks, I find that I have the proverbial stars and dots that are the opinions of the World trying to stick to me.
But, I have a God that knows me by name, and I am not just a number. I have a God that has my name written in his book of life. He loves me. The world may try to pin their gold stickers on me, they may try to place their grey dots on me, but they will not stick because God says I am special. Because God says that I am special, I know that I am somebody, but like Granddaddy said I also am going somewhere. Just like Punchinello in the story visited Eli's house, I am someone who will visit the house of God. I am somebody, and as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. Then as my wife held faith for children, I have faith that because I am somebody, I will go to a place of peace everlasting. I am going to my home eternal to be with loved ones.
More importantly, I will meet my savior. I will see the one who says the stars and dots don't have to stick. I will see the one who told me that I am somebody and that I can go somewhere greater than this old world.
I am somebody, and I am going somewhere! Let's go together.
