Validation

Among other things, "validation" means "to grant official sanction by marking." Thousands of high school, college, and post-graduate students are about to receive diplomas, which are the "mark" of their completion of degree requirements. All of us who are drivers carry a small, laminated card that marks our validation as legal drivers. Sometimes when I visit large, downtown hospitals in major metropolitan areas, I can get my parking garage ticket stamped or "validated" so that I am granted free parking.

Sometimes without knowing it, people struggle with receiving validation from God. Some folks constantly strive to achieve it, never fully getting the sense that God has stamped "valid" on their lives. Others give up on it, and they seek to be satisfied by other validations - power, wealth, popularity, looks, sensation stimuli, etc. Both paths are futile.

Validation from God is granted. Many of us just may not know it. We need to acknowledge and receive what has already been done for us. Here's an early clue...The Galilean commercial fisherman Simon (nicknamed "Peter" or "The Rock" by Jesus) committed what he assumed was the worst possible invalidation. Having pledged to stand by Jesus and defend him to the death, Simon Peter denied even knowing him, and abandoned Jesus just before Jesus was executed. Yet with all of that, when the messenger at the empty tomb told the women to spread the news that Jesus was alive, he said, "But go and tell his disciples and Peter..." (Mark 16:7.) This declared that Simon Peter was restored and declared valid, not by earning it, but by the risen Jesus loving Peter and declaring him validated.

Consider these questions: Do you feel validated in the eyes of Jesus? Why or why not? How to we communicate what Peter experienced to those who do not feel validated before God?

I'll see you around the next bend in the river.