So much of our strength is spent trying to manipulate or manage ourselves into someone else — so much of our heart spilled out by wishing away who we are and where we are. We anchor ourselves to goals met and mark our time in status updates: what’s new? what’s improved?

But here, now that we’ve put on the new self (Colossians 3:10), there is no rich or poor, smart or dumb, thin or fat, single or married, organized or scattered, someone or nobody. We are not who we’ve been, or even who we can be. We are who we’ve already become.

We are no longer living to change. We are living as those who’ve been changed.

The new self is Christ is all and is in all. Our hearts have been transformed, and so has our goal: our circumstances and status are no longer projects to improve, but places to find and acknowledge and identify with Jesus. We’re free to plan our days, not to become some future version of ourselves, but to see the Christ in our present.

The suffering Christ, the compassionate Christ, the exhausted Christ, the abandoned Christ, the triumphant Christ. We are meant to know him and the power of his resurrection, to share his sufferings, to become like him in his death and attain the resurrection of the dead (Philippians 3:10-11).

Christ is all things and is in all things.

He is all this moment is meant for, and He is in all of this moment with us.

Perhaps, if we are not becoming someone new, we have not yet known enough of Him in the person and places we are.