Why your life matters
Why does one’s life matter? I remember struggling with the big questions about life when I was a teenager. There were times when I would look up at the moon and wonder about the purpose of humankind’s existence? Then, my thoughts would shift to how could each of us could matter. When I looked at the moon and thought about us here on earth, I felt incredibly small as such my thoughts rambled around and around in my head until I went to bed.
No matter how small we feel we are, we all have value.
I’m sure that everyone questions their existence as some stage. Everyone wants to know that their life matters, that their life counts and that they are wanted. In other words, that they belong and have a purpose. We all want to know the reason for which we were created or why we exist.
Solomon thought these questions too. He contemplates this thought in Ecclesiastes writing: “Everything is meaningless” and goes on to explain that there isn’t anything new under the sun.
He wanted his life to count.
Your life is so much more than all your struggles.
One of my friends is going through some health and career challenges, and her words to me recently were pretty insightful. “I guess it’s our time to go through some stormy waters.” Everyone goes through stormy waters at some stage. They don’t define our lives, but they do shape them. Our character is shaped during those stormy water times. “For you will certainly carry out God’s purpose, however, you act, but it makes a difference to you whether you serve like Judas or like John,” wrote CS Lewis many years ago.
God sees what you are going through differently to what to see.
He knows that hardship shape character. He also sees you as infinitely valuable. You are worthy of love because you are. You were knit intricately in your mother’s womb, and as such your value, your purpose and destiny are all wrapped up in the fact that you are made in the image of God. Your life reflects something of the uniqueness of God.
Your absence would leave a permanent hole on earth.
Your place here on earth counts. The fact that you are alive at this time in history means that you occupy valuable space. Your life counts. The spirit of fear would come in a try to shoot many arrows into your heart and mind to tell you otherwise. You belong.
In Romans 8, we are reminded that adoption is a beautiful reality. In Christ, we need never fear that we are not enough or unloved. The writer of Romans declares, “So you have not received a spirit that makes you fearful slaves. Instead, you received God’s Spirit when he adopted you as his own children. Now we call him, “Abba, Father.” For his Spirit joins with our spirit to affirm that we are God’s children.”
You are adopted into a new family.
In the ancient Roman world, adoption meant something more than just taking a child into one’s home. When a child was born biologically, the parents had the option of disowning the child. The parent did not necessarily desire their own offspring; the lives in the home were not a given nor permanent. However, an adopted child received many benefits not necessarily given to the biologically born child.
In Rome, adopting meant so much more.
Firstly, that child was freely chosen by the parents, in other words, desired by the parents. Secondly, that specific child would now be a permanent part of the family. The parents could never disown a child they adopted. Thirdly, an adopted child received a new identity. Any prior commitments, responsibilities, and debts were erased; this meant that this boy or girl received new rights and responsibilities.
Another profound aspect was that in ancient Rome, the concept of inheritance was part of life. Being adopted made someone an heir to their father, joint-sharers in all his possessions and wholly united to him. Those were the benefits of being chosen to be adopted into a family.
What does that mean for you?
This beautiful reality is available for you to receive: You are wanted, you are loved, and you are adopted into God’s kingdom with full rights as a child of God. We are “co-heirs with Christ” (Rom 8:17) and through Jesus himself, the Son of God, that we are brought into being sons and daughters.
You count.
Your life matters.
Don’t let fear, lies from the enemy, the situation you were born into or any other hardship dictate to you that you don’t matter. You have infinite value.
“Picture God molding you, getting each detail just right: Shaping your nose. Forming your hairline. Giving distinct length and shape to your fingers and toes. Yet after God formed him, the man still wasn’t alive. And that’s where the next distinction comes in. God breathed his own breath into man. At that point, man became a living being. The Bible tells us that God made us in His image. Like God, we create. We strategize. We experience emotions. We have the ability to love. You have a distinct origin. You were created in God’s image. God used these factors to set you apart, to mark you as significant. They separate you from all other created things.” Author John Herrick.
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