(A short talk for Families and Friends at Five, Berowra Uniting Church, March 2005)
There’s been a good deal of talk about values recently, especially in public discussion about multi-culturalism and the debate about public v’s private education. What people actually mean by “values” is quite unclear, but I think a lot of things become much simpler and clearer if we consider what is valuable.
So, question 1 for us all today is – what’s your most valuable possession?
And question 2 is – what makes those things valuable? Why do you value them so highly?
Now what about people? What makes people valuable? Let’s put it this way – if an alien were to visit earth and watch our society, what would they think about which people were most valuable?
Did you know that we are valued by God?
There’s a story about a girl who spent many weekends making a beautiful dress. She first drew a picture and coloured it in, then found some material that was just the right colour. She cut it out into the right shape and stitched all the pieces together. She added buttons and a ribbon and after a lot of time and effort, it was finished. That dress was so valuable to her, not because it was expensive, but because she had made it herself and put so much effort into it.
But not long after she finished the dress something horrible happened – she lost it. She didn’t know how, but she lost it. Maybe she left it at a friends place; maybe someone stole it; maybe it fell out of her bag when she was taking it on the train to show her Grannie. She didn’t know.
But one day, she was walking along the street and as she went past a clothing shop – perhaps it was a Vinnies store – she saw her dress in the window! She was so happy that she raced inside to look at it more closely. It really was the very dress that she had made! But on that dress there was a sticker that said $10.
The girl told the shopkeeper that it was hers, but the shopkeeper didn’t believe her and said she would have to buy the dress for $10. I’m sure you can imagine how sad that girl was. Here was the dress that she valued so much – she would do anything to get it back. But she didn’t have $10.
What could she do? She decided that she’d just have to save $10 so she could buy her dress back. So she saved her pocket money for several weeks. Each day she would walk past the Vinnies shop to look at her dress and each week she saved a little bit more. She even did special jobs so that people would give her extra money.
Eventually, she had saved enough. As soon as she had $10, she rushed to the shop first thing in the morning, before the shop was even open. She waited until they opened, looking excitedly through the shop window at her lovely dress. Can you imagine how happy she was when she had paid her money and held the dress in her hands?
That dress was now twice as valuable to her now. She loved it because she had made it herself, and she loved it because she had put in so much effort into buying it back after it had been lost. Now she owned it twice.
I think that’s something like how God feels about us. We belong to God and he values us because God made us in the first place. And we are so valuable to God that he is willing to go to great lengths to find us when we get lost.
At the end of 1 Cor 13, after Paul has been talking about the various types of spiritual gifts God gives, he points out that most of these gifts – healing, prophecy, teaching, even knowledge – these all pass away. But three things remain – faith hope and love, and of course the greatest of those is love.
These are the things we should value. The three things of lasting value. Faith, Hope, Love.
These three things, in a sense, define what we value. But part of our challenge is to figure out how those age-old values translate into modern life.
- What do we have faith in, today? Faith in our own abilities, in the power of money, the support of friends and family, our political leaders, the free-market economy, science, the grace of God …?
- What do we hope for? More money, a better house, peace, good health, the prospect of heaven …?
- What and who do we love?
And conversely, perhaps we could ponder more deeply what it means to be valued by God.
- What huge faith God has shown in humanity: in giving us dominion over the earth, calling us his ambassadors and giving us as Christians the ministry of reconciliation – God’s master plan for drawing all creation back into his love. What faith God has shown in each of us, with our individual calls to service.
- What are God’s hopes for you? To grow in maturity as his dear children, to enjoy the life given to us, to shine as God’s light in the world. Who does God want you to become?
- How well do we understand God’s love for us? We are twice loved and precious to God because God not only made us in the first place, but also rescued us when we had lost our way.
Your value as a person is not derived from your social status, or success as a parent, or your grades in school, or how many goals you get in soccer, or how much money the market is willing to pay you. You have personal value because you are a child of God, because of the faith, hope and love that God has for you.
I pray that the faith, hope and love that spring from God will form the basis of our values as we seek to live holy lives in this confused age.