Beloved

Tomorrow we will baptize seven people. What joy!  We will also hear the lesson of Jesus’ baptism when a voice came down from heaven and said, “You are my son, the Beloved.”  These are the only words we hear directly from God in the entirety of Luke. God speaks these same four words one more time in the Gospel of Luke, when Jesus is transfigured on the mountain. We hear that story at the end of this season after the Epiphany.

I invite you to hear these words for yourself. Close your eyes and listen:

“You are my beloved.”

You, too, are God’s beloved. The Apostle Paul, together with the writers of the other letters in The Epistles write to their communities, addressing them, Beloved. “To all God’s beloved in Rome”…. “my beloved children” … “Timothy, my beloved” … or simply, “beloved.”
Our belovedness is not earned. It is simply who we are.  Deeply sewn into our DNA. Sometimes we cannot see our belovedness. Often we do not feel beloved. But we are God’s beloved. Always.

While the world may try to cover your belovedness, it cannot be removed. Our belovedness is deep within, waiting for us to hear, to receive and belong to it, setting us on the path of being fully human.  

When we embrace our belovedness, and know our selves to be whole and to be enough, it’s easier to see the belovedness in others. It’s easier to love and to be generous. It is easier to accept the beautiful differences in humanity.