You are not your fleeting thoughts, shifting feelings, or past sins—you are the one Christ has named, the saint He has called His own. —D.

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You are not the loose thoughts that drift like thistledown, nor the old hurts that settle in the marrow. You are not your failings, not the slip of the tongue, nor the hour when your hands went idle instead of strong. If a man were only the worst of himself, then no field would ever green again, no river would ever clear. But the word has been spoken over you—the name given, the calling sure. And when Christ has named you His own, what else is left to say?

Think of Simon, called Peter—no longer a fisherman lost in his doubts, but a man set firm, a weight to hold against the winds. Think of the woman at the well, who came with an empty jar but left with something deeper, something surer. She had been many things, had worn many names, but in the end, she was the one Christ called to Himself. That is the true story. Not the way she was lost, but the way she was found.

A man’s thoughts will turn on him, his past will rise up like a tide, but the word spoken by God is the thing that holds. You are not the wandering dust of your worst day. You are the ground where grace has taken root. And the rain will come, and the green will rise, and you will see at last what was always true—you were His, and He never let go.