“To be chosen is the ultimate dream, communion with the ultimate destination, and you don’t have to keep looking for a way, because God is looking for you, to be with you, and your chosenness destroys all aloneness. It can look like we are lost on the way — but if we are with Someone who loves us, we are never lost.”- Ann Voskamp
“It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the LORD set his [hashaq] love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but it is because the LORD [hesed] loves you.”- Deuteronomy 7:7-8 (ESV)
Today Ann Voskamp moves on in Chapter 2 of WayMaker. First, she notes that chosenness doesn’t always mean you get your way. However, with chosenness you receive a withness that always destroys aloneness.
Yet, no matter how hopeless or abandoned you feel, know that God chose you because of hesed. The lines of the Bible often translated this word as lovingkindness. Miles Coverdale literally invented this word in an attempt to translate the all-encompassing Hebrew word hesed.
Most significantly, Scripture uses hesed nearly 250 times. Scripture uses it in such a powerful manner. Therefore, some theologians believe it’s the most important word in the Bible. Hence, hesed represents an entirely singular kind of love. Because, Ann underscores, God simply and forever makes the choice to hesed-attach Himself to you. And, Ann encourages:
“Expect God to knock at your door, expect God to rise on your horizon, . . . but just don’t expect God to come looking any way you expect. Expect nothing but hesed, the lovingkindness of God — just not in the kinds of ways you’d ever dreamed. Pain will come, but name it a mystery, and find manna in it, and taste bits of miracle even in what you can hardly stand and don’t understand.”
Today’s question: What Bible verses support the concept that your chosenness destroys all aloneness? Please share.
Tomorrow’s blog: “The art of the turn = life”
