Jimbo's Jots

They come just about every day in the mail. You’ve seen it! It’s got your name on it and it looks official. “YOU HAVE BEEN SELECTED!!” it says. Your heart races and pounds like it’s one of the 12 drummers drumming. You open it with high anticipation that it’s something valuable, like a check for 10 million dollars. And your excitement quickly fades as it reads, “You have been pre-selected for a new credit card.” “BAH! HUMBUG!” you scoff. That is definitely not what you wanted to see!

Chosen. Selected. Handpicked. This is the sixth desire according to Mark and Debbie Laaser. It’s the feeling you have in grade school when teams are picked for kickball. Maybe you wanted to be one of the first ones picked which meant that you were pretty good and others noticed. Maybe you didn’t want to get picked at all because even you knew yourself you were not a very good athlete.

Being chosen is, as the Laaser’s put it, “the desire to be desired”. In a wedding ceremony, we say things like “I have chosen you above all others.” Even in friendships, you have chosen people with whom you have a special relationship and they in turn have chosen you for the very same reason.

On the downside, we have set standards on what is worthy to be chosen. We place a sense of value for choosing on looks, how tall or short someone is, fat or skinny, and wealth. Based on these standards, then we determine who’s in the “in crowd” and who the outcasts are. Not one of my finer moments as a child . . . in 6th grade, I was part of a group that called a girl an “IT” because she was not as cute as others and she seemed dirty and the fact that I wanted to be “chosen” by the right group.

The upside – God does not go by those standards. “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16) Right after Jesus says this to a guy named Nicodemus, he demonstrates what this kind of love looks like. In John 4, he meets a woman. A Samaritan woman. A Samaritan woman who is an adulterer. One . . . two . . . three strikes and you’re out! Jewish men did not think highly of women or Samaritans or adulterers. This is the person Jesus talks to about salvation!

Know this! You are chosen! The “world” that Jesus talks about and John recorded includes you! If you believe in him, you are given eternal life!!

Remember this: “For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will—to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.” (Ephesians 1:4-6)

Be blessed and be a blessing!