I am linking up for Five Minute Friday. The FMF is hosted by Kate Motaung on her blog Heading Home. Today’s prompt is “define.” I love spending time with this crew. They bless me beyond words. We’d love to have you join us. Just hop onto Twitter on Thursday evenings and follow the #fmfparty. Hope to see you there!
It can be so easy to get wrapped up in our brokenness and to think that it defines us. People look at us and they don’t see our brokenness. They do not know our stories. Yet we get so caught up in our brokenness and the ways it defines us. The thing is, my friends, is that we are all cracked and broken pots (see yesterdays post). But God makes us whole again.
God stands with us in the midst of our brokenness and wants us to know that that is not what defines us. What defines us is that God calls and claims us as God’s beloved children. We are defined by our title “children of God.” In other words, I am not defined by what I am not. I am not defined by my singleness or my suffering. I am not defined by my desires to be a wife and mom. I am defined as a beautiful beloved child of God.
“Tara Lee Ulrich, you are a baptized child of God, whatever else you are, remember that you are; for that is the basis of whatever else you are.” These beautiful words remind us all of who and whose we are. They define our belongness as children of God claimed in the waters of baptism.
At the cross, Jesus died for our sins and because of God’s love for us, Jesus’ life, death and resurrection also help remind us who and whose we are. The cross embodies the definition of our calling as God’s beloved children. In the words of the christian group Gungor God makes beautiful things out of dust; out of us! So remember you are not defined by those things that bear you down; you are defined as one of God’s beloved children.