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Significance

I recently had the opportunity to attend my daughter’s first dance recital. The house lights dimmed and the stage filled with the tiny silhouettes of the first group of dancers. Now I must admit that I have a fairly low tolerance for both awkwardness and imperfection. The recital had both in spades. In light of this, I mostly checked out as the first performers began their earnest but labored routines. That is, until my daughter stepped onto the stage. I recognized her thin outline and suddenly my eyes were transfixed on her graceful form moving across the stage. I wasn’t noticing the flaws but rather the girl that I loved.
 

The psalmist prays that he would be preserved like “the apple of [God’s] eye” and Jesus later confirms that the God who sustains the sparrows and the flowers of the field takes a far greater interest in the care of His children.

 

Somehow, in spite of our grand insignificance and the infinite complexity of the universe, the Lord of all creation reserves for us a place in His heart. He peers through the lives of the billions upon billions who live and have lived and sees our single flickering light.

 

I imagine too, that He views us much as I viewed my daughter, with loving intent even as we offer our flawed and inconsequential offerings back to Him. Though no other eye could find value in our lives of little consequence, He lovingly accepts our lives as the earnest yet erring gifts of those He has chosen and adopted.

 

When we begin to see our identity through the eyes of God, we are set free from our infernal quest for significance through our own hands. It has been said that “worth, value, and beauty is not determined by some innate quality but by the length the owner would go to possess them.” If this is true (and it is), then we are truly valued indeed and we can begin living not to prove our significance but to honor the One who already sees us as such.


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