Chosen.
What does it mean to be chosen?
When I think of being chosen, I think of being chosen for a team. As a kid, going to soccer tryouts was always scary because you try to perform to the best of your ability in order to be chosen for the best team. You have a number placed on your back, and the coaches evaluate your skills and abilities in order to determine whether you are the best fit for the top team. After multiple days of tryouts, I remember eagerly awaiting a phone call that would tell me whether or not I made the team. If you were not chosen for the first team, you would play on either the second or third team.
There have been specific times in my life growing up where I was rejected.
When I was about 12 years old, I wanted to try out for the Olympic Development Program for my age group. The ODP team is extremely competitive. Kids from all over the state come to tryouts, all hoping to make the team. I thought I was good enough, so I remember going with my dad to Peachtree City, GA to try out. I went to the tryout every year for a couple years. I got cut every time.
I felt so rejected. I was told I wasn’t quite good enough; wasn’t tall enough; wasn’t strong enough. What a confidence-booster that was…
So I gave up; I stopped trying out. I hated being rejected by those coaches, especially when I saw others I knew being chosen for the team. I felt inadequate, and then became envious of the people that were chosen (not because I didn’t like them, but because I was jealous they were chosen and I wasn’t).
In this world, people are chosen for roles based on certain standards. Sometimes we cannot live up to these standards and they keep us from being chosen for the roles we wish to fill. Other times, we are chosen and then find disappointment when we aren’t given the role we had imagined for ourselves.
What I love about God is that He chose US, EACH of us, to do the same good work and doesn’t care about our physical limitations. Or any limitations. He doesn’t care that we weren’t chosen for that soccer team, because we are always chosen for HIS team. We have an important role to play on God’s team and He yearns for us to play the part that he created specifically for us to play.
God doesn’t see me or you as just another number on the backs of a jersey; He doesn’t know me as human #34758293. He knows my NAME; He knows my THOUGHTS; He knows my PASSIONS and He LOVES me for exactly who I am.
He created us out of the dust and chose us to do His will. God did not need any of us and or feel some type of obligation to create humans, but He chose us because He loves us and loves His creation. And we have two options: we can try to chose the role that we want to play or we can chose to play the role that God has called us to play. It may not always be something that we want, but ultimately God’s chosen role for us is far superior to what we think our role should be.
He is calling us out of our darkness, out of our shame, out of our guilt, and out of our feelings of inadequacy. Once we leave the darkness, we can be lead into His everlasting light in order to run into the chosen role God has marked out for each of us!
“But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light”
1 Peter 2:9
