...is priceless

I have a coin bracelet that my Pappaw brought back from the Philippines during World War II for my Mammaw. She gave it to me when I graduated college and was moving to Dallas on my own. She knew I wanted it. I love that bracelet. I wear it often. I tried to have it appraised, so I could get it insured. I reluctantly left it with the appraiser to inspect, but she was unable to come up with a value. She said in order to find a value, we'd have to go to the Philippines and find similar jewelry and its value. Needless to say, I did not get it insured. It's priceless to me. It's a symble of my grandparents love story that resulted eventually in the birth of my mom. If anything happens to that bracelet I can NEVER replace it not only because of its value but because it's personal.

We are personal to God. As Christians, we are His, His children. We are irreplacable. Of all the people He has created, He only makes one of you. He doesn't make us because He needs us. He makes us because He wants us. He wants a relationship with us, His priceless creations. We get our value from Him.

When we focus on me, myself, and I...meaning my friends, my family, my kids, we take our focus off God. We fail to serve Him as we should. We start thinking our value comes from our friends and what other's think about us, rather than meditating on the Word, the Truth. When we take things personally, get hurt easily, we are focusing and making the issue about ourselves. What if we all lifted our hurt immediately to God and asked Him to make it work out for our good as opposed to holding onto the hurt, thinking about it, trying to hurt back...this world would be a much different place.

Max Lucado wrote a book "You Are Special." It's a story about a town of wooden toys called Wimmicks. All day the Wimmicks would give gold, star stickers to the beautiful, strong, smart Wimmicks. The untalented, ugly Wimmicks who had chipped paint or rough wood would receive gray dots. The ones with gray dots felt horrible about themselves. There was one girl who had no stickers. A gray-dotted Wimmick admired her, and she told him he needed to go see the Maker. She said she would spend the day with Him, so the little toy decides to visit the Maker. The Maker said it doesn't matter what the others think because it only matters what He thinks because the little toy was His. The Maker tells the little toy that the stickers only stick if the toy wants them to, and until the toy could understand, he was to visit the Maker every day to be reminded of how special he was and that the Maker doesn't make any mistakes.

We are personal to God. We are priceless to God. We have value because He loves us. These are the things we need to remember. We need to be spending time with our Maker, allowing Him to remove the harmful, the hurtful things in our lives, and then at some point, we mature to a depth that we realize that whatever happens to us isn't really about us, and that God is going to work it all out for our good. When we learn to trust that, when we believe that, when we live that -- that's when we'll begin to live a victorious life, an abundant life.