Valuable?

The idea of God as father has given me much to chew on. Praying this morning gave me the thought, who am I to you? Why am I worth it to my Heavenly Father?

In the context of my own family, I think about my sons value. He is not valuable in and of himself alone. No one is. Our value is much derived from our relationship with and to others. Our value to ourselves is more uncontrolled than we would care to admit.

God created us in a way that we can survive most anything, even our own self sabotage at times. A large majority of our body runs itself. Even to the point of sending messages to our consciousness that there is action needed. For example, your eyes see a large grizzly, adrenaline starts pumping, and your legs start running. We have little control over stopping these instincts. It takes an incredible amount of diligence and repetition, controlling body and mind, to stop these created instincts that the body enacts to keep ourselves safe. Our consciousness cares much less about our value than our body cares about the value of our body.

The way my son is valuable comes from who I am. It comes from the value that I place on him. It matters not his merit, his ability, or love that he shows me. Although I would be pleased by those things, his value is not derived from there. It is grounded in the fact that he is my son. That I am his father. It is what separates him from every other little boy in this world. His relationship to me. I give him value by who I am. How much more does my father in heaven give me value?

The part hardest for me to grasp over the years is that concept of value. In the case of the believer, value is unlimited. I can, just like grace, only give that which I understand and believe that I have been given. I can only value as much as I understand that I have been valued. For many years I have sought after value in places that have only had limited sources of value. Mostly people, things and my self. People are stupid, things are made by people and I am people. It is a real recipe for undervaluing yourself.

If my son’s value comes from me, and my value comes from my Father in heaven. My sons value will be understood as coming from my Father in heaven. We share the same Father that gives us the ultimate value we seek. The only source of unlimited value.