We may all have worth issues;
times when, for high ground or low, we find we have no place of spirit or
identity in the world; where we feel unworthy, for no want of external reminder
that we are. We may be told, “You are worthy,”
but we can’t quite believe it—our instincts tell us something quite remarkably
different. We feel isolated, confused, alienated; abandoned perhaps.
But for many people the subject of
worth is not really a concern at all; they may feel more worthy than they ought
to, like they have a safe mortgage on life or something like that.
So a safe sense of worth—one
rooted in truth—where our worth is founded on Jesus, and the Saviour alone—is
not so straightforward.
Being Reminded of How Good God Is
When we understand the cost
wrought by the Father in sacrificing his Divine Son, and understanding it has
its human limits, we begin to comprehend the imputed worth God has invested in
us by his Son.
We shouldn’t doubt our worth, but
it seems wired into many of us to do just that. Those straining goals we have,
the unrealistic ones, indicate how conditional our acceptance of ourselves is.
In some ways these goals are good; they push us. But we are cautioned,
especially regarding how unreasonable these may be on us.
Sensible goals are good in that
they help us regulate our lives; we become disciplined.
The unrealistic goals are an
indicator of worth issues.
Offsetting such issues of worth (and
the indication of unrealistic goals is but one example) is the discipline of
being more constantly reminded of how good God is by his gift of
grace—the Salvation of the Lord.
That Sense of Intrinsic Belonging
Why would we doubt our worth? At a
practical level, why? At a sensible and fair-minded level, why? It seems we may
still do, at a felt level.
It’s a tried and generally worn
out idea, but just as novel anytime: the embryo that was once us was conceived
out of a race. The sperm that our father contributed—that one in several
million that won the race, entering our mother’s ovum—was special enough to
cause conception. That we developed through gestation for those nine months,
and grew steadily to adulthood, despite the accidents and all the ill-health we
survived, all this, is nothing short of a miracle.
God has been faithful and we are
worthy to him.
***
Maybe the only way we can feel more
worthy is to continually remind ourselves of how worthy we are to God. The
Father gave his Son for us. All our worth begins from there. We are just as
biologically and psychologically worthy as the rest of the 7,000,000,000 people
that populate this planet.
© 2013 S. J. Wickham.
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