Passport Required (Or Not)

Do you need a passport?

Preparing for our trip to Guatemala requires steady action in order to make sure we are ready to travel and to serve in July.  On Saturday, three members of my family went to the Pottstown Public Library to renew our passports.

According to Wikipedia,

A passport is a travel document, usually issued by a country’s government, that certifies the identity and nationality of its holder for the purpose of international travel. Standard passports contain the holder’s name, place and date of birth, photograph, signature, and other identifying information.

Without our passports we legitimately could not get in and out of Guatemala.  These documents are essential to proving our identity when we go through customs.  Authorities will check our passports when we go through security at the airport in the United States.  When we arrive in Guatemala city, our passports will be checked at least twice before we will be permitted to leave the airport to travel to Xenacoj.  When we come home two weeks later, we will go through the reverse process.

The passports certify our identity.

Without this paperwork, we lack identity.  We are stranded.  We are lost.  We are unrecognizable.  We are anonymous.  We are restricted from moving about freely.

Our identity matters.

Unfortunately, many of us operate with a mistaken identity.

We base our self-worth on things that don’t really matter.  We mistakenly define success and significance by pursuits and achievements that don’t matter in the end.  We go after wealth, power, and reputation, and we pin our identity to these things.

• “I have my professional engineers license.”
• “I wrote a book.”
• “I have my MBA.”
• “I have $XXX in my 401K.”
• “I finished three full marathons.”
• “I am the president of my Toastmasters club.”

I could go on and on.  These things don’t really matter.  They are things I have accomplished, but they don’t define me.

(Are you having an identity crisis?)

If I want to define my identity, I must learn to dig deeper.  I’m fairly certain my identity really comes down to one thing (click here) – my identity is found in Christ.  I am a child of God.

I don’t need a passport to certify this identity.

Do you have a passport?  When was the last time you used it?