How Can I Be His Beloved?

There are days we just long to feel new.

That day, my heart was heavy, hurting. Like the clouds hanging above, I was under a weight. And I felt God’s voice gently calling me, Come to me. Remember who you are, beloved.

I put on my jacket and left the house, boots trudging through snow. White was everywhere, covering the hills. I grasped the camera in my hands, each “click” bringing me home. The pure white snow was hanging heavy on evergreen branches. My soul was hanging too, hanging on to each moment and every word from God.

And in the distance, I watched as the rays of light were breaking from heaven onto the fresh earth, onto the farmland and silos and rolling hills.

God was smiling at me. I smiled back.

It’s in the looking at God’s face that we live as His beloved.

Beloved.

It’s a word that I’ve always known, a word I’ve strayed from. I have put my identity in all the other voices, but the One who calls me beloved. I can be led by what others think of me, expect of me, wish for me. I feel good when those around me feel good. And sometimes, I get lost in the shuffle.

Beloved.

A word that means: dearly loved, darling, cherished, adored, highly regarded, prized, esteemed.

How can this be, God? How can I be your beloved? My fragile heart asks.

The snow flutters softly to the earth, and it seems unfathomable. Unfathomable that we are cherished this deeply by the God who created the stars, the heavens and the earth – cherished and held, and he wants our fragile hearts.

He comes into the places we feel the most unworthy of His love – and he calls us beloved right there.

We can’t live into a new year, a new us – until we first know who we are, and whose we are.  Ephesians 1:11-12 says,

“It’s in Christ that we find out who we are and what we are living for. Long before we first heard of Christ and got our hopes up, he had his eyes on us, had designs on us for glorious living, part of the overall purpose he is working out in everything and everyone.”

God’s voice is soft.
His hands are gentle.
His call is personal.

God’s call is something that others may not understand. And answering that call is a process we may not always understand.

When God’s hands work on us, it can be painful. Becoming a new creation isn’t easy. Our hearts are fragile, and we are like clay in the hands of a potter. Isaiah 64:8 says,

“But now, O LORD,
You are our Father;
We are the clay, and You our potter;
And all we are the work of Your hand.”

Our work is to mold, bend, trust the process, and above all, the gentle hands that work on us.

It’s in the molding to His hands that we live as His beloved.

I took a pottery class all this month, and I learned so much about the process of molding. Even soft clay, when it’s molded into a form, can seem tight and immovable. But one of my classmates told us, “The more you work with clay, the more you realize it’s not immovable at all. You realize that at each stage of working with it, it it still capable of change.”

God knows our hearts are capable of change. And He has an artistic vision for us far beyond what our eyes can see.

As Erwin McManus writes in “The Artisan Soul,”

“Sometimes the hand of God presses against us and creates unwanted discomfort. Like clay in the hands of a potter, we may feel God’s pressing against us as intrusive and disruptive, but we must never lose sight of the fact that God never chooses to give up on us or to put us on an assembly line and treat us as a commodity. He always presses against us. His process is always hands-on. And with each of us he avoids standardization, working to form each person into a unique image of God.”

This is why we are His beloved.

He cares for us too much not to work on us, to mold us into His image, to draw us back to His heart.

Even when we lose patience with the process, and with ourselves – God never does. God never stops calling us beloved. Never stops calling us into the stillness of the woods, and into the brilliance of His glory.

Remember who you are, beloved.

You are His. I am His. And each day, we are the work of His mighty, gracious, creative and loving hands.

We are a work that He cherishes, more deeply than we can know.  A work that He loves, more wide than we can comprehend.  And a work that He never gives up on, every moment of every day.

 

“Fear not, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by name;
You are Mine.”
– Isaiah 43:1

“He who has begun a good work in you
will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ.”
-Philippians 1:6

 

Photo Credit: Derek Cole