Rejection

Gimli loves playing tug of war! He will bring us toys, socks, dish towels, anything he can get his paws on and try to entice us to try to take it from him. He's got quite a jaw lock, and sometimes he holds so tight that we can lift him up off the ground by his teeth, pulling on the toy he's biting. The thing about tug of war is that only one dog can play at a time. Virginia really doesn't like tug of war by herself, but whenever Gimli is playing with us, she all of the sudden decides its her favorite game too and wants to play. She'll just bark and bark at us until we stop playing just with Gimli and start including her in the game. She doesn't like to be left out.

No one likes to feel left out or rejected. We want to be included, desired, and important to others. There's not much worse than feeling forgotten about, or worse: disliked and excluded. Unfortunately, its just a part of life that everyone who has ever lived has experienced. I've been reading a book called Lost Women of The Bible by Carolyn Custis James. She has amazing insight into rejection in the life of Hagar, the maidservant of Abraham and Sarah. Sarah hardcore rejected Hagar! Sarah forced her to get pregnant by her husband, carry a child that she would have to hand over to Sarah, and then after she did all of that, Sarah resents her and abuses her so much that Hagar fled into the wilderness. This is after living her whole life as a Gentile slave girl, which at that time was basically as low as you could be in society. While she was in the wilderness, God spoke to her. He told her that He would bless her and give her many descendants through her son. Hagar then gave God a name: she called Him El Roi, "the God who sees me". Though God gave her this amazing promise, the thing that impacted her the most was that He saw her, He knew everything about her and loved her. She was important to Him. How amazing that must have been for someone who probably never felt important to anyone in her whole life.

God sees each one of us, every person who has ever lived. He loves each of us so much that He made the ultimate sacrifice to give us a chance to reconcile our relationship with Him that was broken by our sin. He offers us the gift of forgiveness for our sin that is free for us but very costly for Him. When we receive this gift of forgiveness, He promises He will never reject us.  We can never do anything that will make Him stop loving us or cost us the salvation He has given to us. How wonderful that we serve a God who we never have to fear being rejected by!