Chosen and hand picked by God

"The Lord your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be is people, his treasured possession." (Deuteronomy 7:6)

One of my greatest fears in school was being overlooked. When gym class played a team sport and the captains would choose their stars, those people who would carry the team to victory, I was pretty certain I would not be one of them. Many of us remember, and still today, feel the humiliation and pain of not being good enough.

Unfortunately, we often carry our inferior mindsets into our adult world. Most of us will grow out of this feeling of never being good enough; but some don't. Praise God I am a new creation. I know my short-comings, but more important, I know my strengths and I know who created me and made me who I am today. But, it wasn't always this way. I had to be renewed and transformed into a confident follower of Jesus.

Just to know I was chosen by God, to be a Disciple of Jesus Christ, is humbling beyond words. I may not have made the volleyball team, but I have been chosen. There are several clichés I could use here, but you get the idea. Once God got my attention through Renewal (Christ Renews His Parish) about 20 years ago, everything changed for me.

Now, it is my duty to see that I tell others about being chosen. It is time I share with all those who think the rejection of man has any weight in the Kingdom of God, that being chosen by God is all that matters. The Bible is full of stories of this, let's start pointing it out regularly, especially to those who desperately need to hear.
 
Deuteronomy 7:6-8

Betrayed

Have you ever been betrayed?

 

Perhaps you told someone an embarrassing, yet confidential, story about yourself, and that person repeated it.

 

Maybe you were negotiating a deal and you believed your counter-part who said your desire would be clearly spelled out in the contract. You signed, and later found out the clause was not in the contract.

 

Perhaps you believed the salesperson who said your new cell phone plan included unlimited data. You later found out that the transmission rate slowed to a crawl after you reached a certain threshold usage.

 

Sometimes the betrayer does not mean to betray you. They simply overlooked something. Other times the betrayer does it intentionally. 

 

Betrayal is usually painful. It can be humiliating. It may cost you a friendship.  It may cost you some money. It may even cost you your reputation or even your job!

 

If only you had known you were being betrayed, you would have done things differently, asked different questions, verified more carefully what was happening.

 

Today’s reading is Luke 22:1-13. Just prior to the last supper, Judas Iscariot agrees to betray Jesus.

 

Judas' involvement was no accident. He conspired with the chief priests and officers of the temple guard. He was to be paid for his act.

 

Jesus knew he was going to be betrayed. He announced it to his disciples.

 

He knew the betrayal would lead to his death – Yet Jesus did nothing to stop it! In fact, he made sure the betrayal went smoothly (Matthew 26:50-52).

 

The sins of the human race demanded a sacrifice. Jesus was that sacrifice (1 John 2:2). Our sins had to be transferred to a goat and removed from the community (Leviticus 16:20-22). Jesus was that scapegoat.

 

Jesus let himself be betrayed, and it cost him his life. This was done so that our sins would be forgiven, that is, removed. He loves us so much that he endured this humiliation and pain.

 

I know that the next time I am betrayed, I will remember that Jesus suffered a betrayal far worse than I. He did it willingly, and he did it for me.

 

Maybe the next betrayal won’t hurt so much…. Just maybe.