What makes you who you are?

Today I had the privilege of conducting a service renewing a couples marrage vows on the occasion of their 25th wedding anniversary.  Mark and Gill have had a tough time recently as Mark nearly died.  It was a great to have been asked to take the service for them - but why me?  I am not yet ordained and I am still searching for that church to which God has called me to.  I am at present nomadic - a pilgrim on a journey.  Is this perhaps a way for God to affirm my calling?  Am I to be a pastor to the pastorless?

Mark and Gill were married in an Anglican church and it was to this church that they returned 25 years later to renew their promises before God and in the presence of their children and their partners.  The service was short, yet intimate and extreamly moving.  God was there and His presence was real.  I wouldn't have missed it for the world.  Today nothing else mattered, no essay, no lecture or anything else was going to get in the way of the task in hand.  I can't say that I felt particularly upbeat today - more miserable like the weather.  (It has rained most of the day.)  But today I had a commission - a job to do - a priestly role to fulfill.  Is seems strange but yet perfectly normal to be standing at the alter in an Anglican church.  (I am an eccumenical.)  The vicar did not mind me conducting the service, Mark and Gill wanted me to do it, I wanted to, and more importantly, I feel it was what God had called me to do today. 

But I am left with a question - what makes you who you are?  Is it a label?  Is it an ordination service?  Is it what you do?  Is it other people?  Or is it God?  I am who I am.  Imperfect, a bit moody at the moment, inadequate in so many ways and a sinner.  But by the grace of God I am forgiven, redeemed and made perfect by the blood of the lamb.  I am a child of God and it is God who makes me who I am.  Today, dispite the rain, it has been a good day.