Value

My child, your value is written
In every fiber of your being.
In every cell, in every portion of who you are.
From the ends of your hair to the toes on your feet.

From your physical body, to the soul within,
Your personhood, screams of a greater being.
Because your value is not in what you have done,
It is not in what you will do, not in what you will accomplish.

It is not something that anyone or anything can ever,
Take away from you, change or destroy.
It is a value that has existed since before the dawn of time.
From eternity past to eternity future, your value has always been.

Because your value comes from being made,
Created, formed, shaped, by a powerful God.
A loving God. A God of grace and truth.
And not just made by him, you are made IN HIS IMAGE.

Created by a loving, true and faithful God
You have, to quote an excellent book,
Dignity, you have value, and you have worth,
And no one, no matter how hard they try, can take that away.

And not only at creation, when God fashioned the world,
In whatever means he chose to fashion it by, was your value
Established. But it was established once again, at a time
When the greatest man who ever lived was killed...

Because he died to bring you back to him.
Back to the God who loved you so well. Child, he wanted
You to be back in touch with him. Because, you see,
Sin had entered the world, rebellion and betrayal.

Because our first parents chose to disdain and push God away,
Because they wanted to be like God, his equal, not his children.
They abandoned his rule and reign, and chose their own way over his,
Spitting in the face of the one who had lovingly made them.

So he made a plan, a plan so huge and wonderful and incredible,
That it could only have been made by a perfect, wise, holy and true God.
He and his Son and the Holy Spirit, hatched a plan to win their children,
Their creation back. And it was an unbelievable plan, spanning generations.

And one day, Jesus stepped down to earth and became a baby,
And he lived perfectly and loved perfectly and was perfectly human.
Until the day he died a horrific and tragically painful death, to bring
Us back to him. And that is where your value lies. Upon the cross.

You are valuable, not because of what you have done or contributed to the world,
Not because of what you will do or will contribute to the world.
Not because of how beautiful you are, or how smart you are, or how good you are.
You are valuable because God chose to make you in his image and likeness,

And you are valuable because of God's Son, the Lord and Savior, God and King,
Jesus Christ. Because of the price that he was willing to pay to win you back.
You see, the value he put on you, is the value that you have...his own life.
Not because you deserve it, not because you earned it. But because he decided
That you were worth it. So he paid the price for you, so you could know him.
That's where your value lies. In the bloodied, tortured, ruined body, of Jesus Christ,
The man who was God. The man who is God. The man who rose to make the way before you.

The clothes you wear, the popularity you do or do not have, the romance that you find
Do not tell the tale of the value that you own. If you are human, you are valued.
If you are human, you are of great worth. You are an expression to the world of
The great and magnificent God who created all things.
And your worth cannot be measured by human means.