You are chosen!

When I was a young man, I remember that a few of us were chosen to receive an award on behalf of our school. We went together to the event and we were on our 'best' behavior, physically representing an entire group of people and behaving in a way that showed the beliefs of that particular school.  We were honored to be chosen to do so. We were elated that our school thought enough of us, enough of our character, enough of our scholarly achievements to be included in that delegation.

The President of the United States does the same. He often chooses people who exemplify what he believes and that he trusts to do a good job of showing those values, and appoints them to represent our country to other countries. It is a great honor to be chosen to do that. Many people express words of great humility and awe that the President would choose them to do such a thing. That he thinks highly enough of them to choose them to represent an entire country.

Many people are also chosen by the Pope to represent him in countries that he cannot travel to at the time. These too are people who do their best to represent the Pope and his beliefs, his values as they travel around the world representing him and his organization, the Church. Once again this is a high honor! It is something that people accept with great humility, great reverence, and they try to do their best to live up to such an honor.

God has chosen each and every one of us. Think about that for a moment. When a school calls, the President, or the pope, we jump for joy that someone would think so highly of us to let us represent them; sometimes we even feel unworthy and wonder why on earth they would have chosen us.  God has chosen us to be his ambassadors.  He has called us to be His hands, His feet, even His voice in a world that so desperately needs to hear from Him. How do we respond? Often we grumble. "Oh dear, all these rules, I have to behave like this or that, and ahh, I can never have any fun!" Wow... the God of the Universe, the One who created all, has offered to let me represent Him! To reach out and touch others as He does, to tell them about His Word, to even speak the Word ourselves from our own human lips. Oh how light that burden is! It should be a joy! We should be so elated that God who doesn't need us, could easily do it on His own, has instead given you and I the honor to be a pathway for grace to enter our world.

Are you up to the task? Are you jumping for joy that God has appointed you as an ambassador? Or do you see it as a heavy burden, something you'd rather not do?

2 Corinthians 5:17-20 Therefore, if any one is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; That is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. So we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We beseech you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.