It did prompt me to remember a song I know by a singer songwriter called Martyn Joseph:
This song always makes me realise that ache that we all have inside to feel precious; to be valued; to be cherished...
The pearl in someone's hand.
I think many of us struggle to feel like that.
We doubt our own value, often linking it to our achievements. I have many young friends who have just finished exams, and the pressure to achieve has been immense. Don't get me wrong. I know studying is important; but the moment the results you get seem to explicitly affect your value as a person - things have gone badly wrong.
There are many other things that we rely on to boost our self image. Things like how attractive we are, how popular we are, or how influential we think we are. These things are so precarious. Relying on any of these sorts of things is fraught with uncertainty. Unless we find something or someone entirely trustworthy and unchanging, we are destined to never be secure in our value or anything else.
Thankfully, we don't have to waste our time and energy worrying about these things. In fact, if we take the Bible at it's word (something I'm trying to do a lot more...), we don't have to worry at all. In Matthew 6 it says:
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?So today - even if you don't know anything else - know that you're precious to a God who made you just the way you are, and who is capable of meeting any need you might have. And that can do more for you than Jasmin and cotton milk ever could.
