By Ken Rolheiser
As I was watching the January 19 World Financial Group Curling from Las Vegas I saw celebrity curlers the likes of Kaitlyn Law, Rachel Homan, Jennifer Jones and others sitting in the front row watching the men’s tournament. In the second row I saw an ordinary fan, a woman, looking unimportant. And I thought to myself, “She is God’s favorite one.”
Like you and me, she is a favorite one of God. If you were the only person needing salvation, Jesus would have died for you. In fact, he did. We are God’s special saints in the making. In our hearts we know this to be true.
God loves each of us the most. As parents, we love our children equally. As a teacher I could not allow myself to have “teacher’s pets”. But my understanding of all this changed when I became a grandfather.
Each of my grandchildren is my favorite. I get to love them more as I get to know them better. I know some of them better because of more time spent with them. It is not like that with God. He knew us before we were born. “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you” Jeremiah 1:5
And in Psalm 2:7 God speaks: “You are my son, this day I have begotten you.” As we become brothers and sisters of Christ, we become the children of God. Today, God has begotten us. This is a mystery to be appreciated. But oh, we are so human!
Lady “Jenny”, a local beauty, sits in the church being admired. Her lacy bonnet is being admired by those around her, she thinks. But Poet Robbie Burns sees a lowly louse is speeding across her bonnet. She tosses her head to her admirers.
“O wad some Power the giftiegieus To see oursels as ithers see us! It wad fraemony a blunder free us, An' foolish notion: What airs in dress an' gait wadlea'e us”
Seeing ourselves as others see us might save us from some blunders but seeing ourselves as God sees us would make all the difference. God loves us more because of our weaknesses. In much the same way a grandparent has to have more love and patience for an errant child.
And God has that unfailing love for each of us. In a Rich Mullins song “We Are Not As Strong As We Think We Are” we hear:
We are frail
We are fearfully and wonderfully made
Forged in the fires of human passion
Choking on the fumes of selfish rage
And with these our hells and our heavens
So few inches apart
We must be awfully small
And not as strong as we think we are
When you love you walk on the water
Just don’t stumble on the waves
We all want to go there somethin’ awful
But to stand there it takes some grace
‘Cause oh, we are not as strong
As we think we are
But with God’s Grace we will do wonderfully well.
