Chosen Before the Envelope Was Opened

In 2019, a woman named Lisa Goich-Andreadis from Detroit published a memoir about discovering, at age forty-three, that she had been adopted. Her parents had never told her. But when she finally obtained her original birth records and traced her biological mother, she learned something that broke her open with wonder: her adoptive parents had requested her specifically. They had seen her photograph in the hospital nursery, learned her story, and told the agency, "That one. We want that one." They had chosen her before she ever knew she needed choosing.

Lisa spent decades feeling like something in her life was slightly misaligned, a puzzle piece forced into the wrong slot. But the truth was the opposite. She had been wanted with fierce intentionality from the very beginning. The love was never accidental.

Paul tells the Ephesians — and us — something even more staggering. Before the foundation of the world, before a single star burned in the dark, the Almighty looked across the whole canvas of human history and said your name. He chose you. Not as an afterthought, not as a backup plan, but "in love He predestined us for adoption" according to the purpose of His will.

You are not an accident of cosmic biology. You are not a bureaucratic entry in heaven's filing system. You were chosen with the same fierce intentionality Lisa discovered in those old hospital records — only this choosing happened before time itself drew its first breath, and it was sealed not with paperwork, but with the blood of Christ.