I was pondering something the other day: have you noticed that God is never described by the stuff he has?

He’s never described by his sweet baseball card collection, or his Steeler bobblehead memorabilia.  He isn’t even described in terms of the kingdom he rules.  (When’s the last time you read an article about Bill Gates that didn’t tell you how wealthy he was?) 

Instead God is defined by the characteristics that make him who he is: love, patience, compassion, justice, truth.

But when someone says to me, ”who are you?”  I usually respond by telling them what company I work for, my educational background, maybe where I live.  I rarely, if ever, describe my personality or character traits.  I even quantify my life in terms of stuff.  Whether it’s readership at R3 or who my friends are, I’m always trying to use material things to define myself. 

But that shouldn’t determine who I am and what I’ve done. 

Greg Boyd says that Christians have one job in this world – to look like Christ.  If that’s the case, maybe we need to spend more time defining ourselves by our characteristics and less by the stuff we have.  For me that looks like worrying less about defining blogging success as pageviews, and more about impacting people’s lives. 

What does it look like for you?