We all belong to God. However some refuse Him:
1 John 3: 1 1 See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God. Yet so we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. 2 Beloved, we are God's children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed. We do know that when it is revealed 2 we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. 3 Everyone who has this hope based on him makes himself pure, as he is pure.
Hope, not assurance. We are His children - we all are according to Jesus - and we do have the ability to refuse Him. The prodigal son is a case in point. However, he came back. How many do not? How many since the Reformation are lost since they have been blinded by the sins and the religions of men? Who knows? Perhaps God will be merciful. We can only pray for that - which is useless under the Reformed umbrella, right?
LOL. Why don't you read some of those words of Christ you constantly reference without much thought?
My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father's hand." -- John 10:26-29
"No man can come unto me, except it were given unto him of my Father." -- John 6:65 "But ye believe not, because ye are not of my sheep, as I said unto you.
It is lines like this that gnawed at me and finally led me to think that Calvinism, as popularly expressed -- or the line about a snow-covered dunghill, just weren't adequate to account for all that we find in Scripture.
I could say that the blessed may start out as snow-covered dunghills, but I don't think we can rest there, because here the snow-covered dunghill is told that it is called, and, if called, enabled -- somehow -- to make itself pure.
It is too bad we spend so much time at one another's throats. Calvin is good, and so is Luther, on the startling proclamation of the utterly free and completely unmerited gift of grace. They and their followers are often very good indeed on all the temptations to pride with which the enemy assails those who have thrown themselves on God's mercy. In a less bitter environment we could profit much from sharing our experience of living with grace, with the fact of grace.
And such an exchange could hardly be anything less than beneficial to all. Not only history but our own lives and our experience of one another testify to the way "kicking at the pricks" persists after we have been opened to the beginning of awareness of God's love. I could often be profitably rebuked by my non-Catholic friends that I have fallen back into thinking too much depends on me alone and graciously reminded that every good and perfect gift comes from above.
And perhaps we Catholics who wander through an enchanted forest where, as the trees in the fairy tale drip jewels, we find angel, saint, and sacrament shedding consolations -- perhaps we could also sometimes encourage our friends to look up and see, for our salvation is close at hand.
Truth be told, (that would be a nice change, huh?) we all face the problem of: Okay, I'm a Christian, now what? How does one, while remaining utterly dependent on God for every breath and every thought and intention, "make oneself pure, as He is pure?"
Let's pray for a time when we can put down the cudgels and assist one another along the way, across the river, and into the kingdom.