Chosen

I watched the mailbox like a hawk. I knew the acceptance letter from the summer program I had applied for would be showing up any day now. I finally saw the mailman drive off and dashed down the steps. There was a letter in the box, but it was a thin envelope instead of the thick welcome packet I had been expecting. As I tore it open, the first two words leaped off the page: We’re sorry. It wasn’t an acceptance letter after all.

We’ve all had those feelings of disappointment and rejection. Maybe your moment came in gym class as you waited to be chosen for a team. Or maybe it’s been as you’ve applied for job after job, only to be turned down over and over again. The moments vary, but the emotions are universal. This world has a way of making us feel rejected and unwanted.

But God says we are chosen. “For he chose us in him before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight” (Ephesians 1:4). God chose you before he spoke the world into motion. In the quiet of eternity past before the dawn of creation, God looked through time and saw you. You–just as you are. God saw you, and he chose you for a purpose: to live holy and blamelessly before him.

Yet God’s choosing of you was not without cost. Revelation 13:8 tells us that the Lamb–Jesus–was slain before the foundation of the world. Even in that moment before God said, “Let there be light,” God’s knowledge of you was complete. He knew every lie you would tell, every heart you would break, every word spoken in anger, every time you would rebel against him and choose your sin over his grace. God knew that to choose you, he would have to redeem you. He knew the price of your redemption would be the blood of Jesus, and he chose you anyway. God chose you, and in choosing you he also chose the cross.

You, me, all of us–we are chosen. The cross is the proof of God’s love for us and the declaration that God has claimed us for his own. When you feel rejected, look to the cross. God loves you, and you are irrevocably chosen.