Inspiration Tuesday: True Value

I am so very, very little. Inconsequential.

There are many things people use to prop themselves up. An "I'm better than you" attitude. The one that drives me the most crazy, is when people use religion (belief in God, spirituality, whatever) to raise themselves up. To stick their nose up in the air and show how much better they are than everyone else. 

Beware of those people, they don’t really know God.

Pay more attention to the person who gives without being noticed. The truly honorable are those that know how little they are. Small. Meaningless.

We are dust in the wind, tossed around, here one moment and gone the next. We want so badly to mean something. To be something. So we pretend. We do everything we can to build ourselves up, to show everyone around us something we deem worthy.

Beautiful. Powerful. Confident. Rich. Smart. Strong. Charming.

Those are the things we want other people to think we are, but they never give us the satisfaction we crave. They are never enough. Because there is always someone else who is… more. And then there are the people who see, who notice to places we lack. We put so much energy into that thing we want people to see, that we inevitably miss something else.

 We may be rich, but we are angry all the time. We may be beautiful, but we hate ourselves. We may be charming, but we are lonely. Our bodies may be strong, but our hearts are so very weak.

So when someone sees those flaws, it feels like the end of the world—destruction of the very walls we worked so hard to build. Except, with God, those flaws have value. Those flaws have a purpose. Those things give us perspective on God’s power.

True value, lies not in things we can see. Not in things we notice right away.

Value is in our actions. In our words. In our hearts.

Value is in the way we affect those around us.

Make someone smile, that’s worth a whole lot more than making someone jealous. That effect lasts so much longer. Is so much bigger.

Be a friend to someone lonely. Give to someone who won’t be able to give back.

By being okay with being small, in the eyes of many, we make ourselves bigger. Most of the people around us won’t even notice those things, because they’re not things we see. They’re not things that make us, individually, bigger and better. They make someone else bigger. They help someone else’s life become more satisfying.

That is value.

And that is what will make you love your life, so much more than being “big” by the world’s standards. Be big in the eyes of a child. Be big in the eyes of the hurt. Be big in the eyes of those who need it most.

By doing that, you’ll be big in the eyes of God as well.