As children of God, claimed and chosen, we are beloved and worthy of God’s unconditional love! No kid at the lunch table, colleague at work or politician can take that away from us.
At youth group, I told my youth to write down on a note card one negative word or phrase that someone has called them or said about them or that they believe about themselves. I showed the youth the music video “Remind Me Who I Am” by Jason Gray and told them to listen carefully to the words.
At the end of the song, I told my youth to cross out the word they had written and to write over it: “Beloved.” I said: “Whenever you hear negative messages about you from others (or from within), remind yourselves of who you are and whose you are: fearfully and wonderfully made, beloved children of God, who are beautiful just the way you are, and who are worthy of God’s unconditional love.”
This is a message our preteens and teenagers need to hear and be reminded of over and over again. But it is also a message we need to hear and remind ourselves.
This message is excerpted from “Beloved and wonderfully made” by Emily Heitzman from the March 2020 Café online magazine.
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