All of Facebook was up in arms over people thinking they had been hacked. I got at least 50, maybe more, posts warning me that friends might have been hacked. Pretty much Facebook was filled with two kinds of people that day; the ones fearful they had been hacked, and the others gleefully telling everyone they had not been hacked, it was a hoax.
It was pretty amusing until I realized I didn’t get “hacked.” I got no message telling me that I had been hacked, nothing, nada, zilch.
Should I be hurt? Should I be upset, suffer from FOMO? I mean everybody got pretend hacked, right? How could I be left out? Was it too many pictures of my grandbabies? Or maybe too much info on my running. Why not me?
I’m actually fine with not being hacked, but it does make me think about times I have been rejected. Of course you can go back to junior high and boys that rejected me, or being left out of a friends circle. We have all been there. (Please tell me we’ve all been there!)
There were also those days in school, at least back in the day, the gym teacher would choose leaders to pick the teams for whatever game we were playing that day. So, if we were playing kick ball, the leaders would start picking the team. This is fun for some, but for others not so much.
I think that even as adults we can face these feelings of belonging to a group as well as feeling left out and inadequate. When we are part of the inner circle we are more confident, sometimes maybe even arrogant, we feel like we are part of something bigger and we get a sense of security – although it may be a false sense of security. When we are on the outside looking in, we might feel like a failure, and that can color everything else we are doing at that time. Too often the world tell us that where you land in either of these groups defines all of you.
Here’s the good news, John 15:16 tells us that “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit – fruit that will last – and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you.”
He chose you! He has a purpose for you, something only you can do for His kingdom! He sacrificed His own life; getting beaten and dying a horrific death, so that He could choose you to do His work. And not only that, He chose you to do his most important work and trusts you to do it in a way that will last. He chose you and He trusts you! You can rest in that knowledge when you feel a little left out on this side of heaven an.
