May 2025

… [God] saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy.

– Titus 3:5a

Grace and peace to you! I hope this day finds you well, and that you feel the love of God surrounding you wherever you are.

I invite you to take a moment and breathe. Look around you. Consider the blessings you have: a place to live. Clothes to cover your body. The food you ate yesterday and will eat today. The water you drink. The air that fills your lungs when you take those nice, even breaths.

All of these things – everything we receive – are gifts from God. Without God, none of it would exist. For what reason has God given all these things to you? What makes you worthy of all that has been offered?

The truth is that there is nothing we have done to deserve such generosity. God has promised to give us everything, and we have done nothing to deserve it. As a species, we can probably think of more arguments why we don’t deserve to be treated so well by our Creator. And yet, we are.

Now consider a triangle. See it in your mind, even-sided, with a point up so it sits flat on one side. Feel free to draw it yourself if you want. This triangle is the Covenant Triangle, our covenant with God, who sits at the pinnacle of that highest point: God, Abba, loving Mother and Father. At the bottom left corner is Loving Obedience, what Jesus calls us to give to God, a dedication to God’s will. And at the bottom right corner is the Beloved Identity, your identity as a beloved Child of God.

When you looked at the things that surround you, you might have had the thought that you paid for those things. You worked so you could afford them. And that’s true… in this world. But what did you do to deserve them from God? What did you do to deserve your very existence? What is it you did that earned you the Beloved Identity?

As Paul writes in his letter to the Romans, nothing. We have all fallen short of that goal. This world tells us we have to earn everything, but if we try to travel that way around the points of the pyramid, starting from God and moving down to the left, we will always get stuck there. We are incapable of that Loving Obedience. We will always fall short of the glory of God.

And yet… we are beloved Children of God. We have been given everything, even though we fail to earn it. This means something else must be true: we don’t travel to the left around the pyramid, we travel to the right. As Paul wrote to Titus, we are not saved because of what we have done, but because of God’s mercy. We are given the Beloved Identity first. It is not the result of Loving Obedience; rather, the Beloved Identity is meant to be the fertile soil from which Loving Obedience grows.

As you start to recognize the blessings all around you, consider what this means for your life. How is God calling you to live into your Beloved Identity?

Blessings, Pastor Rob