Happy Chinese New Year, Vanessa! The year of the Dragon starts today – supposed to be all about success and happiness. Bring it on! Then, it’s Burns Night for Wednesday, and happy Australia Day on Thursday! In case anyone's thinking ‘Get a life Tony’, I do have to know this stuff, being Minister at a multi-cultural church! National days mean a lot to loads of people – they’re about roots and our 'IDENTITY’ – which is the theme of Pause For Thought this week.

I know I'm sad, but I once put ‘Tony Miles’ into a search engine to see if I’m the only one – but no, the list includes a chess grandmaster, an expert on fishing, a professor of mechanical engineering, a specialist criminal defence lawyer … to name a few! Fortunately for me perhaps, our identities are more than just our names.

When I tell people I’m a ‘Methodist Minister’ it’s sometimes a bit of a conversation stopper. On holiday once, I was asked, ‘What do you do?’ My family asked our new friends to try and guess. It was fun. They couldn’t work me out: policeman? Nightclub bouncer? Tax inspector? Used car salesman? Their jaws dropped when told the truth. Funny how we judge people we don't know by how they look, and maybe by our own prejudices. And if we define each other by what we do, what does that say about the unemployed? We're so much more than our jobs, nationalities, or names. Even the great philosophers like Descartes and Nietzsche have wrestled with what identity is all about. But it can be good to ask the question, ‘who am I? What makes me unique? What am I here for?’ There's a Franciscan friar called Richard Rohr who talks about God giving us our True Self, our unique blueprint … he says it’s as if our unique little bit of heaven is installed by the Manufacturer within the product, at the beginning! We are given a span of years to discover it, to choose it, and to live our destiny to the full. I like that!

I believe I’m deeply loved by God for who I am. There may be other Tony Miles’, but there’s only one ME. And there’s only one YOU. So, be unique! Look after yourself today. Take time to be still and think about what makes you who you are. And if you're looking for that blueprint – Gandhi recommended something that was right in tune with Jesus: ‘The best way to find yourself,' he said ‘is to lose yourself in the service of others.’