Beloved Yet Again.

Earlier in the year I wrote about my word for the year, Beloved. As you read, yesterday started with tears and sadness. But God, there’s my favorite two words, He rescued me before I even knew I needed rescuing! He does incredible things like that for His kids, He really does, we just have to recognize them as such. Yesterday, He had a pre-arranged appointment for me that saved the day. I set up a time to visit one of my life long mentors. He watched me through all of my surgeries and pain medicine addiction and never had a judgmental thing to say. He told me one time that he asked God each time I left and had been “high as a kite” on pain meds what he should do and God told him, “love her”. So, for eight long years he loved me by listening and praying with and for me and two years ago he was the pastor that re-established Hubby and I’s covenant of marriage in our 25th year renewal and yesterday, his words and love saved the day.

Prior to leaving for my appointment, I sent him a text and told him that I started the day in tears and wanted him to have a heads up. He responded as I expected with something like, “sounds good, see you at 1”. Not any concern for my state of heart at the time, but I knew when I got there he would minister to it in a special way that only he can. It’s been two years since I sat in his office, it still kind of felt like home. As we talked, his thoughts went to handing me his monthly newsletter, because always save a stamp if you can! It’s a smart thing to do, but I would never be that thoughtful, I probably wouldn’t even get the monthly newsletter out. A few minutes after handing me the newsletter, a story I was sharing sparked his remembrance of the main article of the month in that newsletter. I loved how excited he got when he was talking about the subject. He didn’t know my word for the year and yet here he was telling me about how much God loves me and the new definition he received from Jesus about being fully beloved. His new definition is not only does God deeply, stubbornly, radically, completely love us but beloved means that He is deeply devoted to us. Deeply devoted… stop and take that in for a minute…deeply devoted. What does that even mean??? In our world, it’s really hard to find that meaning being fulfilled by examples. Marriages end quickly, kids stop talking with parents, friends decided the friendship is too difficult, nothing I can see shows deep, utter, devotion. But God, He is utterly, deeply devoted to us, to me, so much so that he had an appointment on my calendar for me to hear about His love and devotion for me, His Beloved. I fully needed that hour yesterday, and I was as blessed as I could be by it!

Colossians 1:16-18 tells me that through Christ God created everything and He created it for Christ, literally everything and it tells me that He holds everything together. If we were created FOR Him and THROUGH Him, I can’t see any reason that He wouldn’t fully take care of each of us, can you? I know that it doesn’t always look like He is caring for us when relationships don’t go the way we planned or finances seem like they will never match up to the need, but He does. I know that I can look back on my life, all the way through, and I see the hand of God all over it. I never have gone hungry, we’ve only had our electricity turned off one time (lol), and my family is all alive and healthy. Those are my basics, but I can see so much more! Just like yesterday, an appointment I had put off a while came on the perfect day. The house we had to leave five years ago because of finances due to my illnesses, my children’s childhood home, has been replaced…even better! God has done things like that throughout my life so how could I deny that He loves me? The answer is simple, I can’t.

Love is a word that gets thrown around a lot, we hear it about things and circumstances as much as we do people. We vow to love the person we walked down the aisle with and then when the quirks got to be too much, love died. That’s the picture we get of love in our world and it’s a picture that simply isn’t true. Love is utter, deep, devotion. Not giving up because we don’t like something. As a Christian, I have to work hard to define love, not just with words, though the Bible nails it head on, but also with perception and translation. I know Hubby loves me, he adores me in fact. I feel the same about him, most days. But we are both human and our love wanes and flows based on our moods, our own needs, our distractions, etc. God knows how to love us solidly. (I didn’t know if that was a word but it seems to fit.) As we grow and mature in that love, it becomes more deeply rooted. I’ve found myself longing to love others better, or well, and because of that I find myself treating others differently. The Bible says that we will be judged by the standard we judge, the less I judge others by my own yardstick, the less I feel judged by them. That doesn’t mean they aren’t judging me, it means that I don’t belong in their heads so if their thoughts are of me, so what? I’m doing me the best I know how with what God has given me, JUDGE THAT!

Today I woke up singing. I know that it helps that I went to sleep doing the same, so I was sure to do that last night. I didn’t have much to say to anyone but Jesus yesterday, I needed to work through some things with Him, but today, watch out! God bless you all and have an awesome day!