Dear Mom,

I caught up with an old friend recently, and it got me thinking. I started thinking about how much of life is shaped by the people we choose. The friends we keep, the one we marry, the people we trust with our hearts — every choice carries a story of affection and purpose. We don’t choose everyone — we choose those we love, those who draw us, those whose hearts somehow fit with our own. Love, in its truest form, always involves a choice.

That thought led me to wonder about God’s choosing. Scripture calls it election, and the more I read, the more I see that the Bible speaks of it not as a cold doctrine but as the warmth behind salvation itself. If we’re honest about what we’ve already seen — that our hearts, like the vultures we spoke of in the previous letter, are bound to our fallen nature — then we have to admit that none of us would ever choose God on our own. Left to ourselves, we’d always turn toward the carcass of our sin. That’s why God’s choosing isn’t unfair or arbitrary; it’s necessary mercy. If He didn’t choose us, none of us would come.

The Bible is plain about this. Jesus said, “You did not choose Me, but I chose you” (John 15:16). Paul wrote that God “chose us in Him before the foundation of the world” (Eph. 1:4) and that He “predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of His will” (v. 5). Election isn’t God shutting people out; it’s God breaking through the walls of rebellion to bring people in. It’s the story of a King who walks into a room full of vultures and gives them new hearts that long for life.

When I think about that kind of love — that God didn’t wait for me to find Him, but came and found me — it changes how I see everything. It humbles pride, kills boasting, and fills my prayers with gratitude. Because if grace depends on His choosing, then salvation really is of the Lord, from beginning to end.

Augustine said it this way: “God does not choose us because we believe, but that we may believe.” Election doesn’t erase faith — it makes faith possible. It means our salvation rests not in our weak hands but in His strong grip.

Mom, I know this can be hard to swallow because it cuts across the way we’ve often been incorrectly taught and can sound strange or even offensive to our human sense of fairness. But when I think about who I was before grace — dead in sin, blind to beauty, a vulture by nature, happily and freely feasting on carrion sin — I can’t see election as anything but love. God didn’t wait for me to choose Him; He stepped into my darkness and made me alive. He loved me when there was nothing in me to love. And Mom, He did the same for you.

That’s what I want you to see — that election doesn’t close the door of salvation; it opens it for people who would never have walked through on their own. It isn’t God keeping some out; it’s God pulling any in. Without His sovereign mercy, heaven would be empty. But because He chose, it will be full — every seat filled by grace alone.

With love,
Your son

Passages to read together:

• Ephesians 1:4–5
• Romans 8:29–30
• John 15:16
• Deuteronomy 7:6–8