You are his beloved child…

Here’s a story author Paul Young wrote this week on his blog:

Bill was asked by a member of his church to visit a relative who was mentally unstable and had tried to kill herself four times in one afternoon. He arrives to find her strapped down in the medical psych ward, her abdomen bandages where she had used a knife to stab herself repeatedly. She then had taken an overdose of pills and smashed the glass she drank them with and used the edge of the broken glass to saw her throat open. Now she lay there strapped to a bed with a tracheotomy and unable to speak. Bill had no idea what to say. He pulled up a chair next to her and this is what he finally said to her:

“You belong to the Father, Son and Spirit. You always have. You always will. He loves you and likes you. You are his beloved child.”

He waited and then said it again and then again. He said it to her about ten times and huge tears began running down her face. Over the next weeks she was transformed. Her family marveled at the changes in her.

The truth of what Bill spoke to her is what each of us is coming to understand. Father, Son and Holy Spirit have loved us from before the foundation of the world, have loved you, have loved me. By intent we were included into the love that dances between Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and in exchange the Three have climbed into our darkness and blindness to heal us from the inside.

This is what our churches need to hear today; that they are his beloved children.

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