Did you know that you are actually precious, worth more than life to someone out there? It’s so easy for us to feel like we are so small and not worth anything to anyone really. How many times do you think “I’m sure they only care because of what I do for them?”
Okay, even if your self esteem is flying off the roof, it is still so easy to feel insignificant in the grand scheme of things. For example, there are estimated to be more than 7 billion people on this earth right now. I don’t know about you but maybe cause I am teaching my little ones numbers right now, 1 is sooooo very tiny compared to 7,000,000,000. The other day, my big girl asks me “Mommy, what’s the biggest number you can count?” What’s your answer to that question? Really think about it, not just theorectically, but practically, how far can you count?
Okay, so 7 billion, but that’s just as of right now. If I go by the conservative estimate that the world is only a little over 6,000 years old, and people have been around since the very beginning. If we assume that the growth has been exponential since the very beginning, I think it will be easy to assume that there has been more than 14 billion people in existence since creation. Still feeling significant?!
Psalm 8:4 (AMP) What is man that You are mindful of him, and the son of [earthborn] man that You care for him?
What I love the most is that all of that doesn’t actually matter because the Bible tells us that God’s mind is FULL of us. He knows the number of strands of hair that you have. That means that he knows when one falls out or a new growth begins. Do you even know that much about yourself? I know I don’t!
Matthew 10:30 (AMP) But even the very hairs of your head are all numbered.
I know it’s easy to think that God might be too busy with everything else (ever wonder what that everything else is) that he doesn’t really have time for you but think again. He is seriously, desperately, madly in love with you and that’s the truth!
Marinate on that today and hopefully, the obstacles that seemed to loom over you sometimes can shrink to the minute reality that they are!
I’ll confess. I loved Whitney Houston. I have loved Whitney since I was little, 5 or 6 years old. I wanted to sing because of Whitney. My whole desire to sing was born from watching her sing.
I love the lyrics from her song, “You were loved”. The chorus goes like this:
You were loved by someone
Touched by someone
Held by someone
Meant something to someone
Loved somebody
Touched somebody’s heart
Along the way
You can look back and say (mm)
You were loved (yes you were)
Okay, this post is not really about Whitney (though I could talk about her for a while). That’s not really what this is about. For most people, there is some truth in those words. We can relate. We may have grown up in loving homes, or had a caring teacher. Mom and Dad may have been affectionate in showing their love for us, or not! Most of us have loved someone, even if we later thought they didn’t deserve our love. We’ve been there for someone and they’ve touched our hearts along the way. I grew up in a loving home. Of course, we had our own share of issues, but I knew my family loved me, especially my dad. I was a daddy’s girl. I was the first girl after two boys. I enjoyed my dad’s attention and affection. I enjoyed being doted upon. I was loved!
For others, you may not have felt loved. I am very aware that life may have been hard and just difficult and void of love. I know there are people who did not ever experience any display of love, at least, not in the obvious way many may have experienced love. I sympathize and really wish I could change every sad story. My heart aches when I think of children who have no awareness of love being extended to them. If you ever want to get me to tears, all you need to do is show me some injustice or a situation where a child is unloved. It breaks my heart!
But there is good news even for the one who feels unloved. There is someone who loves you more than you can imagine. You are loved! You are cherished! You are thought about constantly by someone who is completely taken by you! He’s loved you, loves you and always will. It’s Abba. He dreamed you up before he created you. I love reading the account of creation in Genesis. It talks about how God created everything by speaking it into existence. “Let there be light”, “Let the waters be separated”… and so on. But when it gets to the part where he decides to make man, he does something totally different. It talks about him first of all making us in his very own image!
Wow! He wanted us to be like him, look like him, act like him! But the part that intrigues me the most is that when God made man, he got his hands dirty. He picked up the dirt with his own hands, shaped and molded Adam to be just the way he had envisioned. He didn’t speak man into being. Now the evidence is clear that it wasn’t a lack of ability as demonstrated from earlier creation. No! He chose to make man with his own hands. His own hands designed Adam’s arms, his ribs, his chest, his nose, his lips, his eyes, every last detail was handcrafted by God!
Have you ever carved wood? I remember woodworking class in high school. I enjoyed it for all of 30 minutes. It is tedious work. It takes time, detail and care. You have to first saw out the wood (and we did not have power tools)! You then had to chisel slowlyyyyyyy. This was more tedious if you were making something curved! After hours or even days of doing that, then you had to sand it to make it smooth. I remember my teacher sending me back to sand at least 3 or 4 times because when I thought I was done, he apparently had higher standards for me. Then we had to polish the pieces to give it that shine of a finished product.
See, I had to do all this to get a good grade. The thing is that God didn’t have to. Now, just put yourself in my shoes for one minute. If I had the power to speak my project to life, em, you may love woodworking and all, but I on the other hand, would have exercised my verbal creation powers. I would have run to the nearest bathroom and called my project to life like that!
But God had that choice. He used it in other things. But when it was time to make people, he opted for the longer, tedious, dirty, labor intensive option! He wanted to enjoy the process. He wanted to be involved in every detail. He handcrafted us for his pleasure.
I’ve got much more to say about you being loved but for now, I just want to soak this up for a while!
