“Peace, Dougster!” said Rick as he shook Doug’s hand at the peace today. “Dougster?” I queried. “I pick up nicknames like that,” Doug replied.
“Could be worse,” I said. “I grew up being Smelly Chele and Stinky Klinke.” The names were cruel, but made worse by the fact that as a child I had recurrent urinary tract infections, and thus had frequent accidents…..Doug suggested I should blog about that.
The choir members were having fun at my expense this week, because I objected to us singing “I have decided” as a hymn selection. WE DON’T DECIDE, I ranted. JESUS calls us to his service. I (loudly) referenced John 15:16: “You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit”…..and as a joke, some choir members suggested we sing “I have decided to follow David…..” (and Judy says she sang exactly that during the hymn!). “I have decided” I told Doug, “not to blog about that…..”
…..but then thought about it a bit more.
In Ephesians 1:4-5 we read “just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love, He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will”
We are assured that we are made in the image of God, and that we are truly his children. The Gospel of John tells us “The sheep hear his voice; and he calls his own sheep by name . . . . I am the good shepherd; and I know My sheep” John 10:3,14.
And though, like that “accident” prone girl of yore I am still covered in the reek of my own filth (sin), I am confident that my Father-who called me his own before the foundations of the earth- knows me by name…..and it ain’t Smelly Chele/Stinky Klinke…..(perhaps He calls me Chelster!)
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