Rejection hurts, and focusing beyond rejection can hurt even
more.
My devotion appeared on a Canadian website for which I was a
monthly writer. As usual, I received many encouraging comments from readers,
telling me how much they enjoyed the devotion. They also shared things from
their lives to which the devotion related.
But amid the positive came the negative. The reader wanted to
respond the day of my devotion but couldn’t because she thought her comments
should be positive and encouraging—and hers wouldn’t have been. So, she waited
until the next day. She zeroed in on my statement that God was our only true
Comforter. She had needed much encouragement but found it through interaction
with others who consoled her in other ways. She couldn’t believe I would
discount their efforts. She wondered if I had ever experienced grief. Of
course, I didn’t intend to discredit how others comfort us. I merely said that
when all is said and done, no person can give us the kind of comfort God can.
Through experience, I’ve learned not to respond to critical
comments, so I let the email go without a response. Her words, however, haunted
me. Satan has a way of making our minds go to the negative rather than the
positive. The next day, I received another email from the same reader, offering
her apologies and asking for my forgiveness.
She had been leafing through a book of devotions she had
collected—devotions that had meant a great deal to her in her time of sorrow.
Among them was one I had written some time before. One that related to a
several-year period in my life when one grief after another overwhelmed me and
led to depression. Suddenly, she saw what I said in a different light. I
quickly emailed her, giving my forgiveness and telling her I would gladly pray
for her emotional healing.
Paul knew about rejection. Many accepted the message of
salvation through Jesus Christ that he proclaimed—but many rejected it, and
him. He was hounded, jailed, and eventually killed. Yet, his focus aimed
forward to the One who accepted him and had an eternal place reserved for him.
Not taking rejection personally helps us deal with it more
healthily. Rejection is often not about us. It wasn’t Paul the people didn’t
like, but the message he preached. It wasn’t me the reader disliked, but she
misunderstood one statement. Rather than outright rejecting the message, I’ve
learned to look at the criticism and try to discover at least one positive
thing I can learn from it. Criticism often contains some element of truth.
Even when the rejection is personal, we must learn to move on.
Some will simply not like us for assorted reasons: our personality, our
appearance, our economic status, our family. God created us as we are, and some
things we simply can’t change. But we can know that God never rejects us even
if others might.
Don’t let rejection derail you as you pursue what God wants you
to do. Keep going . . . and trusting God.
Prayer: Father, when rejection comes, turn our eyes to You, the
One who never rejects us.
Tweetable: How do you react when rejection knocks on your door?
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