See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God. Yet so we are. Nobody asks to be born. You have to do something to become a mother or a father. You have to do something to become a wife or a husband. You don’t have to do anything to become a child. It is something you just are without any effort on your part or without any requirement. That we are the children of God is such a radical statement yet we hear it almost as a cliche. Since we are the children of God our identity is written in stone. You can’t un-beome a child. No matter what we do, no matter what is done to us, we are always the children of God. Now any parent can tell you that they accept their children as they are. However, they then have the obligation to help their children to become who they were meant to be — full of love and grace. Sometimes that requires discipline and sometimes even being tough. So with God. God is always loving us but also knows what we are capable of becoming and so calls us to grow as intended. Our only obligation is to be who we are.
