Matins Devotion: September 1, 2023

Ephesians 1

When there was nothing there was love. Before the stars and the sun shined, before a single blade of grass fluttered in the wind, your Father in Heaven had made up His mind. He was going to make you His own forever. He was going to reach into His creation that would be corrupted by sin and bring you home. He was going to find that little orphan covered in iniquity, wash you clean in the blood of His only begotten Son, and bring you into His kingdom. So when you were born, you were born outside the arms of God. But long before you were born, before your father Adam was born, in fact, God the Father declared that He would be your Father. “Before the foundation of the world,” St. Paul tells us, “in love God predestined you for adoption to Himself as His son through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of His will, to the praise of His glorious grace, with which He has blessed you in the Beloved.”

So don’t be afraid. When the world rages around you, when it seems as though the storms of this life are going to consume you, be at peace. You rest in the arms of the God who controls the wind and the waves, the God who loved you before there was wind to howl, before there were waves to crash. When guilt tears through your heart, when the sins you’ve committed haunt you and scream that God could never love you, don’t believe these lies. Before sin ever was, the love of God was waiting for you, waiting to redeem you, waiting to claim you in the blood of Jesus Christ and in the waters of your baptism.

When there was nothing there was love. Before anything existed, God knew you and loved you, which is why He brought the very universe into existence–to be your loving Father forever. So be at peace. Even if the world around you melts, the blood of Jesus Christ will not. It will always carry you into the arms that have been waiting to receive you from before all time.