God chose us before we were born. We were not left like last picks for a schoolyard team. We were valued from the beginning. But not in the way this world values.
As important as all creation is to God, we are more important. God knew we needed more than our earthly birth to understand our worth. He sent Jesus as the Word to help us understand the eternal, always present, ever lifting love of God for us.
Has it worked? Do we live as the treasured children of God because of Jesus? If we only know His salvation without knowing the intimate, identity-raising, soul-satisfying love of God we live shortchanged.
Jesus came to show us how treasured we are. Unfortunately, sometimes we stand among the Pharisees with legalistic leans. Or we can be tax collectors who think we are entitled to whatever we can grab for ourselves.
Advent is our time to contemplate the great opening of God’s heart and find our place in it. Love made the arduous journey, crossed the great divide between Heaven and earth to give us so many new reasons to sing. Have we lost our song? The only way to recapture it is to take our eyes off our broken world long enough to see Love looking straight through us, all the way to our neediness and loving us there.
Without God's love as expressed in Jesus, we cannot live above the confusion of this world. We get caught in it, trapped by it. However, through the pure unmatched love of God expressed through Jesus, we can be new-born in a love that heals our souls and restores our perspective.
We are so very loved. We should wake every morning to the new gifts of God’s love. We should live each day expressing our well-loved identity in Christ. Nothing else makes sense in our torn apart world. We must be the ones who demonstrate how being completely immersed in irresistible and heart-changing love makes all the difference we need.
Remember . . .
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