A Meditation

What if you were created on purpose? What if you were loved with a passion and depth greater and wider than anything you could imagine? Take a moment. Close your eyes. Breath deeply. Imagine this. Imagine this love and this lover. As you set your self in this love, as you open your heart and imagination to it, what do you feel? What do you look like?

What if you really believed this love was true? How would you live? How would you treat yourself? What would it look like to live in this love? Who would you be? Take a moment. Close your eyes. Breathe deeply. Imagine this.

Now widen the scope. What if this were true for the person next to you? Your mother, father, siblings, relatives? Classmates, coworkers? Take a moment. Close your eyes. Breath deeply. Imagine this. As you set the people closest to your heart (or even just acquaintances) in this love, what do they look like?

Finally. What if this were also true for the person who irritated you on the bus or the road this morning? The person you try to avoid? Or even farther, what if it were true for that person (because there's one in everyone's life) who just makes you want to pull your hair or just shake them? What if it were true about all of the Iraqis, Iranians, Middle Easterners? The Sandinistas?

What if your enemy, your enemy and the enemy of your country, what if they were also created on purpose? What if they too were loved with a depth and a passion unimaginable, by the same Creator who holds you in the depths of his heart?

Take a moment. Close your eyes. Breath deeply. What is your reaction to this? What do you feel? Disbelief? Fear? Outrage? Indifference? perhaps a grain of truth?

This is the heart of the Gospel: For God so loved the world he sent his only son.

He loves the world. Breathe that into the depths of yourself, all the way to your toes. God loves the world. You, me, your friends, neighbors, family, and those that we don't care for. God does.

God speaks twice in the Gospels to Jesus. Both times saying, "You are my beloved Son." This enduring message of love. He says it to each of us, too.

But. It is this love, that is Jesus's very identity. He accepts it and makes it the basis for everything. He CLAIMS God's love. He BELIEVES God's love. He LIVES God's love. This is the foundation for everything.

It is this love that is meant to be the foundation, too, for everything in our loves, particularly those of us that claim to follow Christ, who are called to measure our life to His, to follow the example he set.

What does it mean to be God's beloved?
To know I am loved?
to be with this loving God?
to know that I am not no one?
to know that I am not alone?

My core fundamental identity is I AM GOD'S BELOVED

Breathe this truth into you, again and again and again. Breathe it out in your words and actions to yourself and those around you. Let it bring you wholeness and into holiness.

You are the beloved of God.