During my sophomore year in college, I was on the new student orientation team under the leadership of a Resident Advisor. I’d worked with that same Advisor during my freshman year, which was for me, as it is for so many adjusting to college and what lies beyond, a tough one. He knew this, and one day, when we were discussing the new student handbook, he stopped and said, “You know, Jen, God doesn’t just love you. He likes you. He chose you.”
I carry those words in my heart. I carry them along with the words of love, and encouragement, and correction, and guidance that people in my life have been kind enough to share. And I carry with these the wise words of C.S. Lewis, and William Law, and Dallas Willard. And Psalm 23, Jeremiah 29, Romans 8, Galatians 5, Matthew 7. And that still, small voice that stopped me in my tracks on a morning hike to tell me “it’s okay.”
I carry in my heart the Word, Jesus our Savior and Lord, who calls to us as surely as he called to Lazarus. He is the messenger and the message that God wants His children to hear. God doesn’t just love the world. He loves you.
Lord, we pray that being rooted and established in love, we may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge – that we may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. {Ephesians 3:17-19}
Jennifer Shaw
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