His Child (Dearly Loved)
Originally posted March 3, 2015
Some days I find my own company pretty nearly unbearable. It’s exhausting, it really is, to think about myself all the time. How I look, what I’m saying, what impression I’m giving people. Always picking to pieces every little thing that concerns me, searching for some scrap that I can tack on to hold my sense of self-importance together. Letting myself be pushed to extremes whenever something goes right or wrong. I can boomerang from scathing pride to whimpering insecurity in a matter of hours.
Last Sunday found me sitting quietly in a pew, feeling like it was a miracle that anyone ever wanted to be around me. Because I certainly didn’t.
Sometimes when I think about the fact that God loves me, it feels absurd. How could God know me as well as I know myself and still love me? Surely if He knew the self-absorbed contents of my heart, He would put a little distance between us.
But the absurd, incredible thing about God is that there’s nothing we can do or say or think that will make Him step back. He never tires of our company, never grows frustrated with our neediness. He doesn’t re-evaluate His love for us with the changes of the seasons. His love is steadfast and relentless.
“See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!” (1 John 3:1)
I am humbled and in awe when I think that the God who perfected the laws of physics that hold us onto this Earth would have anything to do with a selfish speck of dust like me. More incredibly, He doesn't stop at merely acknowledging my existence. He claims me as His own. Brought into the world on purpose. An heir to all the riches of His love and justice and mercy.
To be someone’s child is to be irrevocably a part of who they are. To have a God who claims me as His child is to be unconditionally accepted, eternally listened to, irreplaceably valued.
If I can wrap my mind around that kind of Love, I won’t need to waste my time sifting through what other people say about me or the image I see in the mirror for some small self-esteem boost. Because everything I am searching for- from you, from the stats on my twitter posts, from the grades on my transcript- is already found in the all-encompassing Love of God.
