Thought of the day
When you meet someone new, one of the first questions usually isn't "who are you," it's "what do you do." Teacher. Coach. Nurse. Contractor. Stay-at-home parent. Sales rep. We answer with a job, and somehow that job becomes the shorthand for our whole identity.
Paul opens his letter to the Ephesians differently. He doesn't call them by their job or their reputation. He calls them "God's holy people, the faithful in Christ Jesus" (Ephesians 1:1). Holy doesn't mean perfect or impressive. It means belonging to God. Before Paul asks anything of them, he tells them whose they are.
That matters because everybody else is trying to hand you a different name. Your job wants to name you. Your bank account wants to name you. Your kid's last report card, your marriage in its hardest week, the mistake you made last year, the compliment you got yesterday: all of it is reaching for the pen, trying to write in the blank that says, "Hello, my name is ______."
Some of those names sound good. Successful. Dependable. The one who always shows up. Some sound painful. Behind. Not enough. Disappointment. Either way, when something other than God gets to name you, you end up managing that name instead of living free.
Here's the question worth sitting with today: what could happen this week that would change how you feel about yourself? A hard conversation with your spouse. A missed deadline. Your kid struggling at school. If your answer points to something other than God, that thing has probably been naming you for a while.
Paul is about to spend an entire chapter taking the pen out of everyone else's hands. Before you get to what you do today, let this be true first: you belong to God.