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There is exactly one person who could have always said of Himself, “I AM.” And He is. He is more so than anything else, because everything else only is because He says it is. When He said what is, what He said was Him. The Him that was what He said will be important later, because now He’s one of you, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

When He was done saying things, there was the first you. All the other yous, including you and I, were inside the first you at this point, but the first you wasn’t finished until the second you came out of him. The first two yous together constitute one whole you, one capable of making more yous like them, which is really neat.

When I say like them, I mean like Him, because at this point, they could both say, “I am,” like He could. He made them that way, and that was great. He also gave them a way to say, “i am not,” which was also great. As long as you can say, “i am not,” saying “I am” really means something, just as long as you never actually say you aren’t.

But then they said it, and now we’re not, because we’re still like them. Since all of us aren’t, we can’t do anything, because only things that are can do. You can’t do nothing in a place where anyone is, so we all have to go away to nowhere at all. The scary thing is that we’ll know how much we’re not once we’re there.

This is where the Him that was what He said comes in. He says we still are, so we are, because what He says is more real than who we aren’t. To prove it, He said, “I am you,” so now He’s one of us, but because He’s also Him, He still is, even though we’re not. Then He went away to the very noplace you were supposed to end up in and stayed there forever, which took Him about three hours.

So now that that’s taken care of, we can say, “I am.” At least, we could if we knew we were, but there’s another problem. There’s somebody else who wasn’t before we weren’t, and he doesn’t want us to start being again, so he does all the nothing he can to get us to forget that we are. It doesn’t help that we don’t know to begin with, because knowing that is something that someone who isn’t can’t do, and we all aren’t because the first whole you wasn’t.

The Good News is that He’s taking care of that, too. Whenever He talks about how what He says is one of us and now we are because He wasn’t once, He comes to whoever heard it and sits inside them. Wherever He sits is somewhere, and nobody who isn’t can be somewhere, so we are once He’s in us. That means we can say “I am” again, and, so it means something, we can still say “i am not” for now, but no one’s forcing you to, and I wouldn’t recommend it.

Because He lets you say you are, you can do. People who aren’t can’t. Even if sometimes it looks like they do, they only ever don’t. Since knowing who He is is a thing you do, you can’t unless He says you are. There’s nothing you can do to know that He is or do what someone who is does while you aren’t. He took care of all that for you, though.

…

I’m just going to hope you got all that.

Written by Peter Smith, a Senior at Minnesota Valley Lutheran High School in New Ulm, MN. Cover image by Emma Nelson (Peter’s classmate) and Ben Lundsten, (Peter’s teacher). This article was first published in The Charger, a student publication of Minnesota Valley Lutheran’s Desktop Publishing class. Read about Peter’s donut-art-induced existential crisis at https://mvlcharger.blogspot.com/2020/01/how-bunch-of-donuts-gave-me-existential.html