Part of being human, it seems, is learning who we are.  It is to learn what it means to be a human being, what it means to be a creature with our capacities, what it means to be an entity who is equipped to live as we are.  We will spend our lives unraveling what it means to be a human being.
     As we should.  We're not here to wander around without thinking about who we are. We're here to find truth, to find meaning, to find the wholeness that is inherent in the creation.
     But why?  Why, I wonder, as I listen to Jay-Z's newest album, his deeply personal and confessional writing about his life, does the human being choose to grapple with these things?  Simply, it is part of who Jay-Z--and we are; it is part of who we are as human beings.  We live on a tenuous edge, a tenuous edge between meaning and nothingness. Yet we only do so because we live in a meaningful world; in a meaningless world, we would not, indeed, could not make such distinctions.
     Hence, regardless of how you feel about Jay-Z and his music, take time to appreciate that his work--and yours--underscores that we live in a meaningful world.  And we only do so because this world has been created by a meaningful God.
     Otherwise, how would we know that, in ourselves, our fragile selves living in a mindboggling world, this life means anything?