I have always felt like the outsider.

Among peers, among friends, among people.

Here I have been, like a face pressed against the glass of the warmly lit window pane, not longing to belong with the people I knew so much as I longed to find my people, to experience deep relationship.

Being "myself," different in my interests than almost everyone I knew in small-town Alabama, did not much help.

You could call me different than the average teenage girl.

I rather talk about the meaning of life around a campfire on Friday nights than go out for a party. I rather run through the rain than walk through a boutique. Rather curl up with a book than the latest Netflix show.

And goodness, I hate small talk. I hate pretending.

I am not trying to say that any of these things are bad, but they happen to form a lot of the chasms between me and other girls my age.

All of these things add up like bricks on a scale, and the end weight leaves me an outsider or at least, feeling very much like one. And the feeling haunts me, scares me, away from and out of relationships. Makes me feel inferior in my differences.

This post is not to complain or to rant.

I want to attest to the fact that feeling like an outsider is a gift from God. He has redeemed my pain, my high school tears and fears. Heck, insecurity is my current pain.

As I sat mostly outside of the feast of friendship, Jesus tapped me on the shoulder and led me away. I heard a farmer say it on a grainy Facebook video the other day, speaking about a rejected lamb. Maybe when we experience rejection in important relationships in our lives, it is because the shepherd wants us to Himself for a time. Maybe I traded deep relationship with my peers for deep relationship with My Creator.

There are some important truths to remember here. We must not seek isolation as a lifestyle. "No man is an island." We need each other. And something else. No "outsider" is alone. Jesus too was rejected. So many others around us are lonely and hurting in the same ways.

To some extent, every person you know feels like the one standing outside looking in at the party. The devil desires for us to feel isolated, unloved, unknown. He desires to make us selfish and unloving in relationship.

And he haunts our daily steps and failures with the truth that other humans cannot fully know and love us. Only God can do that.

But ultimately, there are NO outsiders because of what Jesus has done. I am not an outsider, whether I feel like it or not. Jesus pursued us and invites us ALL to His table. We will feast in the House of Zion. It is not about what we do or have done.

It is not about how socially adequate we are, how we look, how we feel. Those things pale in the brilliant light of Christ. Self is drowned out by His glory as we sit down at the table, accepting the free gift and losing ourselves.

And His face is all we see.

"We are all welcome. There's grace enough.

I'm not an outsider to Your love."

-No Outsiders, Rend Collective.

Praise God, since I have been the one lingering outside the door of the feast, feeling inadequate to join, I can better share in the pain of those milling lonely.

Now it is my gift and my purpose to be the one that opens the door for those feeling outside. We must share hope with those who feel like they do not deserve it, socially and spiritually.

As a Christian, saved by GRACE, how can I stand in God's courts unmoved to action, forgetful of the faces in the cold and shadow. Faces I know and love.

Ignorance of God's love is not bliss, it is hell.

I remember that girl, smoking and high, on the steps of my dorm, repeating how God could not forgive her, how she couldn't stop going back to addiction. She felt an outsider to God's love, undeserving.

But she could not ever deserve it. None of us could. We did not earn our seats at the table.

Christ was crucified to bring us into the fold, that we might know the Gracious Good Shepherd.

Nobody has to be an outsider. It is our undeserved privilege to invite others in the door.

All of us who have been called to feast in the House of Zion, we cannot close the door on those around us because we are scared, busy, or bitter. Will we who were once in cold and shadow leave others waiting outside?

Out of love we have been given, we must invite others inside to the feast and the fire, into the glorious and never-ending kingdom, into the everlasting arms.

There are no outsiders to His love. Heaven is not like a middle school cafeteria, with cool and drool tables. There is no rejection, no less-than there. His everlasting arms are big enough for us all.