Worthiness

What makes your life worth something? It doesn't matter what I think. What do you think makes your life worthy? There are many things that people use to prop up their worth. There are many ways to measure up a human's days to see if life is worth living. I don't pretend to have all the answers to the meaning of life, but I want you to understand a few things.

First, let me make it clear what does not make you worthless. Suffering does not make your life worthless. Poverty can't take away your life's meaning. Nothing about the shape of your body or brain capacity makes you unworthy of living. Your belief system, religious or political, is valuable because it is an expression of what you think has influence and importance in the world. Your worth is not about what others call important.

But it is also not only about what you think makes you important. There are a few values in the world that cannot be changed. They cannot be manipulated for very long and they stand, eternal and steadfast because every generation can see their worth, and throughout history worthy things have been agreed upon by men and women who take the time to evaluate it.

No one may ever talk about you or I in the future. Our names may be limited to our tombstones, if we are blessed with one. After our parents and our children die, no one may ever speak my name or your name again, but if someone wrote down your story, what would the story be? Or even better, if someone could play a video of your life, what would others see?

There are a few things that people treat as important, every day of their lives. What do you do for money? Money is needed in our society. It isn't evil, and there is nothing wrong with having money, but everything about your money says something about you. What activities are you willing to do for money? Where your boundaries lie says more about you than how much you have. Besides that, where does your money go? Will the things that you use your money for last? Does it contribute to your health or your death?

People use their time and resources for obtaining and maintaining power. How much is your power worth? Will you keep it after you die or even for that long? Power always crumbles and is given to other people. It cycles through your hands into another's hands because you can't hold onto power. It just doesn't work that way. If you have power, you must use it to maintain it, and in showing it off and in using it to keep it, you take a risk of losing it, but trying to hide it and store it means it disappears under your nose, so living for power is like living year-round for one season of the year. It comes around to you, but you cannot keep it if it is time for it to leave. What makes power praiseworthy is how you obtain it and what you do with it. That's the only thing that will last. If history exclaims about how much power you had, will it praise you for it?

Glory seems like a good thing to live for. It makes others praise you, but if they saw the tape of your or my life, would they still praise it? No person can stand the weight on their souls of obtaining glory. The only way to have true glory that you can keep is to do things in your life that honor other people. Honor yourself and you will do it alone. And human glory is not eternal. The value of glory fades in your mind, so that it is not an eternal thing, it becomes just a memory.

Perhaps you live for honor. Maybe it is important to you or I to have others esteem us. But living for the praise of people will make you crazy. One person cannot make even one other person happy, so the esteem of others is out of your control a majority of the time. Better to be yourself and live your simple life and let praise, honor, glory and power go or come to you, according to the season. Any of these things might be seem desirable, but once you die they lie on the ground like a pile of dead leaves and are only good to noursish the soil. Some things you just can't take with you.

Before you condemn me for making others feel like what they value isn't important, perhaps you should consider yourself. You must think it is ok for them to continue to devalue their lives by pursuing worthless things, whereas I at least have the compassion to tell them they are making themselves worth nothing.

But keep reading, because there are a few things worth pursuing and living your life for. The test of their value is how long they last. And if you are conscious after death, what will still be there when you wake up?

Many people live or die for freedom. This is a worthy cause and something that you can share with others when you pay for it. But it doesn't have the lasting value of some other things. You may die for freedom, but your son or daughter may still give theirs away. Your death for the sake of freedom teaches others it is important, though, so the pursuit of freedom is valuable.

Many people focus their entire resources on faith. What they believe - talking about it, teaching it, or sifting through it becomes everything to them. This is a valuable thing. What you believe in can share good things or bad with others. But its value is in it's shareability, and only if what you share will improve with age and not deteriorate. Is it a seed of health and life or a seed of death for other people? Only time can tell if a belief brings good things or bad. Theories don't make the cut for good faith. Beliefs have to be practical - able to be used for something good- in some way. Faith/belief is one of the three most powerful things on earth, more powerful than power or money or even glory, which are the three most desired things on earth.

Hope is priceless and somewhat eternal. It can heal the body and soul and mind. It can be shared with others, and it is contagious like a nice fresh breeze from the ocean. Almost nothing else can challenge the value of hope. The greatest hope is a sure one that lasts for eternity. And the only hope that meets that criteria is the hope found in Jesus Christ. His death paid a price for something... And his resurrection guarantees it will be given as promised.

But the greatest and most lasting and most powerful thing known to men, alive and dead is Love. Like the universal solvent is water, love is the universal carrier of everything good. Love means you can't let others suffer for very long. Love means you look for the good in a person, and if you see bad, you suffer with that person in that way. Love is an eternal list of powerful activities a human does with compassion that are positive forces in his or her own life and in the lives of others. You can take Love with you forever. It is placed in your mind and it cannot ever be taken away. Human love alone is limited, but the love of God is invincible. Mere human love can be changed or subverted, but that's not the same as the unchanging love God has given us in Jesus Christ.