Value

When I was ten years old, I collected baseball cards.  I collected them only because my younger brother and older cousin collected them.  The problem was that I had to buy so many packs to get a single good card.  After a while, I gave up.  I used the baseball cards to clip onto the spokes of my bicycle to make a motor noise.  Later I realized what a mistake I had made.  Many of those baseball cards had eventually become valuable.  Eddie Yost, Stan Musial, Harmon Killebrew to name a few.  In good condition, they were worth $50 … and I had hundreds of them!  But they were gone, used up and wasted.  That’s because at the time, I didn’t know the value of them.  And I didn’t know the value that they would eventually be.  But the dear Lord is different.  He knows our value from the beginning because He knows the end of everything from the beginning.  And God loves us because, … well, … just because He has chosen to love us.  Jesus said in John 17:23, “I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me.”  God has loved us just as much as He has loved His own dear Son, Jesus!  Unlike me and my baseball cards, God knows our value.  And we are each precious in His eyes.  He loves us!  He loves us all!  And He loves us still!