From the beginning God chose you.
—2 Thessalonians 2:13
Rejection hurts.
The boy who was always last to be chosen for the team never forgets it.
Neither does the girl who navigated her high school years without once being asked for a date.
Peanuts comic strips made Charles Schulz rich and famous, but he never shook off the pain of having every drawing he submitted to his school paper rejected.
Henry Kissinger made it big on the world stage, but he never got over being the kid nobody would sit with at lunch.
If you’ve suffered the agony of human rejection, balance it with the exhilaration of divine acceptance. God chose you before the creation of the world (Eph 1:4). “I have called you by name; you are mine” (Is 43:1).
God chose you before you chose him.