They are Rejecting Me, Not you

Week Fifteen | Fifty-Two 4.17.21 

My first real memory of rejection happened in third grade, in the lunch line. I tried to share my faith and love for Jesus with one of my favorite friends (perhaps a little too zealously), only to be misunderstood. Not only did I get uninvited to her birthday party, but I lost her friendship and the circle who ran with her.

I was devastated. 

But God, in time, healed my heart and gifted me with new friends. They weren’t the popular girls, but they were the right girls...and I was free to just be me.

I’m a grown up now and I’ve lived a lot of life, both the bitter and the sweet. That little girl heartbreak no longer throbs, but the scar remains. And sometimes, so does my hesitancy to be fully me. To offer all of me, just me, the way He’s made me.

Because wounds leave imprints that last.

And rejection can come in a thousand little, and big, ways...all of our days. It’s one of those life things that makes us more alike, than different.

It’s been happening since the beginning, even to the God who invited all things into being.

Oh how He understands the pain of rejection.

In 1 Samuel 8, the children of Israel have grown weary and impatient with their leaders, so they demand a King. After all, everyone else has one so why shouldn’t they?

So Samuel, once young and revered as God’s chosen prophet and judge, now old and dismissed as simply not-good-enough.

And in His all-knowing mercy, God comes to his hurting and confused child and says,

“Do everything they say to you...for they are rejecting me, not you. They don’t want me to be their king any longer.”

G o d. Wounded, for us.

This hope, this truth can wash over a broken heart like a tidal wave of both

pain and relief,

grief and joy,

disappointment and purpose,

conviction and gratitude.

Because it’s not about me...and that hurts-good.

My job is to trust and obey.

His job is to fix it, when I do and when I don’t, for

His forever glory and my eternal good.

So I will remember, that my

longings 

ideas

relationships

callings

dreams

gifts

adventures

plans

may be good things...but when they are *God-things, I get to lean in and let go. Knowing I’m not alone, the battle belongs to the Lord.

And it’s here I find myself falling more in love with the God of everything, who somehow still gets moved by rejected things - so we don’t have to be.

By His stripes we are free.