LaFe

As is obviously evident, the majority of UCSD is compromised of Asians/Asian-Americans. While Hispanic people aren't that rare, they're not everywhere either. So when I heard of LaFe, which stands for Latino Fellowship, as well as meaning The Faith in Spanish, I thought it would be interesting to check out. I went and saw Hispanic people as well as some Asian and White people. Basically the leaders told us what their outline for the year was as well as what they hoped to accomplish. One of the things they talked about was finding your identity both in Christ and in your ethnicity.
This was interesting to me as I have always had a bit of an identity crisis in terms of my ethnicity. Last year, for my creative non-fiction class, I wrote about how I have never really embraced my culture and have at times tried to ignore it. However, God throughout my life has spoken to me about who I am and why I am. One of the songs I love to listen to about this is Flame's "Where God Placed You". In it, Flame talks about how he grew up in the ghetto listening to gunshots at night and living off of welfare. He questions his role in life but then realizes that God puts everybody exactly where they need to be. God made no mistake about where He put you.
Your color, ethnicity, race, background. All of that is part of God's bigger plan. When we become ashamed of who we are culturally, we are telling God that we feel He made a mistake. That He put us in the wrong place. That He should have known better. God put us all somewhere so that we may glorify him in the midst of our situation.
If all Christians were the same, it would be hard for them to relate to people who have not yet come to Christ. However God puts us in different situations so that we may know how the world feels. He made some people Black so that they could go into the Black community and preach the Word. He put some people in the midst of the ghetto so they could spread God's word amongst people who seem to have no way out. He made some Christians scientists and others, artists, so that through those people, all kinds of communities might be reached.
So the next time you start thinking about your role in life, think about it through the eyes of God. Why would God put you in that situation, in that community, with that background, and how can you best glorify His name where you are and with what you have been given.