On Being Chosen

My earliest memory of PE is that I hated it. Yep, as a kid the current workout queen loathed those torturous 45 minutes of pure hell. Hated it. It wasn’t just that I wasn’t athletic, it was that EVERYONE knew I wasn’t athletic. Remember having team captains, and how the team captains had to choose their teammates? Guess who was chosen next to last? Oh, my friends would eventually choose me, and they made sure I wasn’t the very last but I sure was close to the end. I have spent some time bemoaning my singleness, again not for the reason you may think. I bemoan my singleness because in my mind I haven’t been chosen. I’ve had dates, I’ve had offers, but no one I see myself with long term. What I kept seeking and asking for was for the person I wanted to choose me. You guessed it. God has not honored that request on multiple occasions. While I was saying, “God, what about him?”, God was responding, What about HIM? What about the One whom God sent just for you? I remember after a terrible breakup when I spent an exorbitant amount of time grieving the loss of the relationship, I was sitting at home in a deeply painted room with the blinds closed. I was studying and praying, and for a split second I saw a gleam of light shining through the blinds on the wall. In that moment I knew that was Jesus reminding me that He was always there. That He loved me and that He had chosen me from the beginning of time. That was twelve years ago, in the springtime when I was finally beginning to come out of the dark days. At this point I’ve written a lot about the spirit of rejection, so I won’t go down that path in this blog. But I will say that when you are alone, there is a temptation to equate alone with unwanted. This is a reminder to myself and to anyone else that alone does not mean abandoned, forgotten, or unwanted. The Savior, the King of Kings, and Lord of Lords knows exactly who you are, and He has chosen you for Himself. This morning as I was preparing for church I was listening to a message about Moses standing in front of the burning bush. Moses had been in Midian for 40 years before God spoke to him from that burning bush. God still saw him, and God still chose him. In my mind 40 years was a long time to be running from God and the call on your life, but how long have many of us been running? How many of us are running because we haven’t made peace with our singleness? Whether you are single, married, widowed, or divorced, you are chosen. WE are chosen for such a time as this.