Beloved?

Reflections on the sermon at Church yesterday...

It all started in the garden. God told us to name the animals and since then we haven't really stopped.

We look at things and group, define and label them - an attempt to make this complicated world easier to understand and process. But like most things we've taken it too far, we don't stop with animals, with objects. We move on and throw labels onto each other

We group each other

Define each other and label each other.

And they stick.

Each and everyone one of us had labels thrust upon us growing up, some good, some bad but there they were.

Nerd

Jock

Goth

Punk

Teachers pet

Loser

These labels follow us - often still influencing us - even when they are far from true now, if they ever were. They pursue us and echo in our souls even when we think we've moved on. A shadow of our past haunting us, torturing us as we suffer beneath the surface many never seeing it.

It's amazing really how a small seemingly insignificant word can haunt us so much. How experiences from so long ago still have a role to play in our lives ten, twenty years down the road. Even when we fight so hard to overcome them and move past them. So much of who we are an attempt to prove the past wrong.

A child in his early adolescence, trying to find his way, find out who he is. Building and developing friendships but often feeling like he is on the outskirts, just trying to find a way in. Time and time again he tries to break through but it feels like he is incessantly banging his head against a wall. Labels are thrust upon him - some from others, some from himself.

As time goes on, friendships develop, the labels fade...but not from his mind. There they are inked - tattoos on his soul. Making him doubt and question the intentions of those around him - why? how? is it possible?  He tries to believe himself, but still they are....

A grown up now he's stronger in mind and in body but these labels still haunt him. Still bring tears to his eyes and make him question others and himself. a twister of tortured thoughts tossed around and tearing up his mind. He struggles to hold on, to grasp to the truth but it seems so far way.

The word called by the Word

Beloved.

He wants to believe it. He yearns for it with every ounce of his being but these labels weigh him down. Tire him out and he just can't seem to find the strength to believe. These old words just have too tight a grasp. So he lays there, tears streaming down his cheeks begging and crying for the truth to take hold.

Lord help my unbelief