The Chosen

Richard Rohr, OFM, said something recently that particularly caught my attention: “Chosen people are chosen to tell other people that they are chosen too.”

Although we say we believe God’s love is limitless and boundless, we still want to put fences around God’s love. These fences are often made up of words like “deserving,” “worthy,” and “fair,” as is illustrated in the parable of the Prodigal Son. Surely not all people are deserving or worthy of God’s love. Surely it’s not fair that God loves someone who is destructive. Surely if God has a special relationship with me and my people, God can’t also have a special relationship with you and your people.

It is worth noting that in Acts 17:28 it is said, “For in him WE live and move and have our being.” We, not I. All of us dwell within the God who made us, and God dwells in us, for we all exist in the Body of Christ. Thus, when Jesus said we should love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength and love our neighbor as ourself, this means that the God I love—the God in me—is the God I love in my neighbor. Every one is one; everyone is chosen.

If we truly believed that and were able to tear down the fences that we, not God, have constructed—well, as Sam Cooke sang, what a wonderful world it would be.