I AM

It was by the second day that I realized that there would be no set time for the teacher's coming. He came in the afternoon.

"Do you know the Name of God?" asked the teacher.

"I don't know that I do."

"It's made up of four Hebrew letters, the yud, the heh, the vav, and the heh: YHVH. It's the most sacred of names, so sacred some refuse to say it. And yet you say it all the time."

"The sacred Name of God?" I replied. "How could I when I never knew it?"

"When you speak of yourself, you say the Name."

"I don't understand."

"When you feel happy, you say, 'I am happy.' And when you're not, you say 'I am sad.' When you tell others who you are, you say, 'I am' followed by your name.

"YHVH means 'I Am.' It's the Name of the Eternal, the Name of God. His Name is I Am.

"Then we all say His Name."

"Yes. And you have always said it. It is woven into the fabric of existence that when you speak of yourself, you must say His Name."

"Why is that?"

"It's because your existence comes from His existence. He is the I Am of all existence ... the I Am of all I ams. Your I am only exists because of His I Am. And as you exist from Him, so it is only from Him that you can find the reason and purpose of your existence. Therefore, when you say your name, you must always speak His Name. And you must always speak His Name first."

"Because..."

"Because His existence is first and your existence flows forth from His. That's the flow of existence. Therefore, you must put Him first and then let everything flow from that. Let everything begin with Him and flow forth from Him. That's the secret of life. To not only live for Him, but to live your life from Him, to live from His living, to move from His moving, to act from His actions, to feel from His heart, to be from His being, and to become who you are from who He is ... I am."

(Anonymous)