“It’s really amazing to have amazing people like them tell me that I’m good, too.”Anna Graceman, America’s Got Talent 05:29 for the quote

The little girl in this audition has a lot of talent.  Even though her parents and friends believed she was talented, she was thrilled when the judges recognized it. Maybe it was so emotional because she knew that the judges “weren’t just saying that because I’m their daughter or friend.”

Many of us live with our failures each and every day. We wonder how anyone could love us. People may tell us that they love us or that we are lovable and we don’t always believe them because we think they are supposed to say things like that. And the Church often adds fuel to that fire.

The Christian faith doesn’t pull any punches. The truth is that we are sinners. We can be evil and vile creatures. However, some take the reality of sin to an extreme by saying that there is only one thing God can do: Condemn and punish sinners. In that light, we look at our lives and wonder how God could ever love us.

But God is the Righteous Judge and this Judge says: “I have loved you with an everlasting love…”[1] “Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you![2]” And listen to this: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”[3]

God judges rightly by God’s standards, not ours. That standard is powerful and life-giving.

Each of us, no matter how marred by sin we may be, bear the image and likeness of God. Each one of us is loved by our Creator despite our words, thoughts, or deeds. “Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”[4]

We are loved because we are God’s creation.

We have an opportunity to present God to a lost and dying world. What an amazing thing it will be when they hear about God’s great, unending, and unconditional love and the deliverance from sin and sinfulness that that love brings.

Maybe we will echo Anna’s words when we say, “It is amazing when an amazing God tells me that I am loved, too.”