As part of our closing discussion about Youth Sunday, the youth group “Post-It Note Bombed” a boring hallway at our church. Each Post-It includes a positive word that God speaks over all of us. Loved. Redeemed. Worthy. Enough.
Who am I?
I’ve had the opportunity to explore this question, along with my youth group, the past month. It’s been a fruitful exploration.
Each year, our youth group organizes and plans a Youth Sunday where the young people take over Sunday morning worship and do it all themselves.
I insist that each year we pick a theme. This helps us rally around one concept and have our prayers, our sermons, songs and any kind of drama or skit support that theme. It helps for the youth to have a focus.
This year we chose “Who Am I?,” and began to discuss who we are.
We talked about who the world says we are: not good enough, weak, selfish, guilty, ashamed, useless, outcast, stained, alone.
About how Satan has been whispering lies to humanity since the days of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden.
But how God calls us something different. The Author of Truth speaks over the Great Deceiver. Through a relationship with Christ, we have a new identity: loved, worthy, enough, complete, whole, well, forgiven, new.
The youth asked everyone who attended worship last Sunday to wear a name tag. “Hello My Name Is…”
We could write our given names, or our God-name.
One name continues to stand out to me: Chosen. God chose me. God chose you. From the beginning of time, God chose to include humanity in God’s Kingdom reign.
God chose to send Jesus. God chose to repair humanity’s flaws and make creation whole again. God chose to die on a cross. God chose to defeat death. God chose to rise again.
We are sinful, and not good enough, and yes, weak. But through God’s eternal love and delight, we don’t have to stay those things.
We are eternally and unabashedly loved by our Creator. God chooses to love us; God didn’t fall for us.
Most importantly, God chooses to love us despite our shortcomings. It’s the definition of love that keeps coming back to me — a definition that society has gotten so wrong.
God didn’t fall in love with us. There isn’t some magnet draw about us that just enticed God so much God couldn’t stay away.
God chose to love us. God continually chooses to love us. And God won’t ever stop because God can’t. To do so would be beyond God’s nature. God wouldn’t be very loving.
We can emulate God’s everlasting love by choosing to love others. It’s not easy to love your neighbor. You have to choose to do so every day.
And I am grateful that I am chosen. Righteous. Redeemed. Holy.
Every day God chooses me.
And you, too.
~ Dusty