Welcome to today's encouragement from the Our Daily Bread Devotional.

I'm Mike Whipp, and I titled Our Reading, Do I Belong?

Actress Sally Field finally felt what we all long for.

When she won a second Oscar in 1985,

she exclaimed in her acceptance speech,

I've wanted more than anything to have your respect.

The first time, I didn't feel it.

But this time, I feel it.

And I can't deny the fact that you like me. Right now, you like me.

In Acts chapter 8, an Ethiopian eunuch was also amazed by his acceptance. As a Gentile,

and as a eunuch, he was denied entrance into the temple's inner courts.

Yet he yearned to be included.

Philip found him returning from another unsatisfying pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

The Ethiopian man was reading Isaiah,

which promised that eunuchs, who hold fast to my covenant,

will receive, within my temple and its walls, a memorial and an

everlasting name. How could this be? Then Philip told him the good news about Jesus,

and the man responded, look, here is water. What can stand in the way of my being baptized?

He was asking,

Am I really allowed in?

Do I belong?

Philip baptized him as a sign that Jesus had bulldozed every barrier.

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