Everything Changes...

I put this together for Orphan Sunday a year after we got back from our adoption journey in Kazakhstan. It was hard to make, and is hard to watch, even today. Evidently time doesn't heal all wounds. David Platt is right "Orphans are easier to ignore before you know their names, but once you do, everything changes". 

Beloved

Beloved - this word has been echoing in my head for a day now.

Not a new word. not an uncommon word, but a word in which I can sink deeply into.

It is a word of hope, a word of acceptance, a word of belonging, a word of peace, a word of joy, a word of comfort. A life giving word, a life changing word.

 It overcame me like a tidal wave with such a simple thread of logic from Dan Cruver: When Jesus rose out of the water at His baptism His Father proclaimed to the world, “This is MY BELOVED SON, and I am very pleased in him”. And because we are sons and daughters, what is true of our Messiah is also true of us.

WE ARE BELOVED!
I AM BELOVED!
My Father in Heaven has declared to the world, that I am also His beloved son.
I am beloved.
And this changes everything,

Being Wrong

This shouldn’t be a new idea, but it is to me. This shouldn’t require a paradigm shift, but it does for me. The position we have in Christ, as sons and daughters of God, as children who are beloved, adopted, redeemed, from the before the beginning of time, means that it is OK to be wrong. We can risk it all, we can abandon all reservations, we can make mistakes, we can fail. In our failure we are still loved. In our error, we are still children of the King. So let’s take a chance, let’s risk it all, let us abandon our fears of failure and our need to be right, and jump. Let us grapple full on with the complex effects of the human condition knowing we might make a mistake, and that is OK.