From the belief that I am worthless, deliver me Jesus.- The Litany of Belovedness.
Some days we forget the simplest truth:
we don’t earn God’s love—we receive it. In God's eyes we are not worthless, we are loved.
That is the truth at the heart of today’s reading.
John doesn’t begin with us—our efforts or our failures.
He begins with God: His righteousness, His fidelity, His holiness.
Righteousness isn’t our achievement.
It’s the family resemblance of those begotten by God.
We love because He loved us first.
We walk in the light because the Light has claimed us as His own.
If you consider that God is righteous, John says,
then you know that everyone who acts in righteousness is begotten by Him.
Righteousness isn’t something we manufacture.
It is something we receive—
a gift planted in us by the One who calls us His own.
And then John pauses, and invites us to pause with him:
See what love the Father has bestowed on us…
that we may be called the children of God.
Not a small love.
Not a conditional love.
A love freely given—naming us, claiming us, making us His children.
This is the heart of the Christian life:
not fear, not striving, but identity.
We act in righteousness because we belong to God.
We love because we have been loved first.
Today, John invites us to remember who we are—
and to let that truth shape the way we walk through this day.
From the belief that I am not loved, deliver me Jesus.
A Prayer of Belovedness
Lord Jesus,
teach my heart to rest in the love I cannot earn.
Let Your light remind me that I am claimed,
Your righteousness remind me that I am begotten of the Father,
and Your mercy remind me that I am never forgotten.
Free me from every lie that says I am worthless or unloved.
Root me again in the truth that I am Your child—
named, chosen, and held by a love freely given.
let my life reflect the One who loved me first.
Amen.
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