chosen

There was a period in elementary school where, in the pickup games we played during recess, I was always chosen last. In fact, if there was an odd number of players, sometimes I wasn’t picked at all. Later on I got to be one of the fastest kids in my class, and my small motor skills improved a lot, but for a few years I knew what it was like to be unwanted. And I still cringe when I see it happen to some poor kid.

I think of that every time I read the first few verses of Ephesians, especially this from Ephesians 1:3-6: “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. 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.”

I spent so many years trying to be good enough to be picked, so it’s amazing to think that God chose me a long time before I could demonstrate any worth. He decided before there even was a planet earth that sometime in the 20^thcentury of its existence he would put on it a Greg Steggerda. And in that moment of deciding he already claimed me as one of his. He intended from the very beginning, in fact from before the very beginning, that I would live a life of grace and mercy, of love and joy and peace.

Isn’t that amazing! The more I think about it the more it boggles my mind. And the more it makes me feel good. Really, really good.