Who am I is a question most of us think about. The answer we come up with is clearly important since it is usually related to what is the purpose of life and a healthy self-esteem.
Some wag has put it like this “The average human being has enough fat to make seven bars of soap, enough sugar to sweeten seven cups of tea, enough lime to whitewash a chicken pen, enough potassium to make 200 matches, enough sulphur to rid a dog of fleas, enough water it takes to bath in and in all is worth about $2.00!”
The truth is that we are worth far more than that, even though there are times when we don’t feel very valuable. How can we face these low times, these times we feel no better than a speck of dirt?
As with just about everything we use, it shouldn’t surprise us that our value is best seen in relation to something else. We value gold above blue metal because it is rarer. When we see ourselves in relationship to God our value is experienced in a wonderful way.
The Swiss/French theologian John Calvin said, “In knowing God each of us also knows himself”. Why am I worth more than a mere $2.00? For starters I’m made in God’s image, then I learn that His Son, Jesus, died in my place upon the Cross and finally as a person who is trusting Jesus for forgiveness I’m indwelt by God’s Spirit. There is nothing as calculated to add value than these wonderful truths. Truths that are not abstract but experienced by every Christian and freely available to all men and women who would come humbly to God through Christ Jesus.
A contemporary theologian, James Packer, in his block buster “Knowing God” suggests that there are a number of truths the Christian can remind themselves of daily.
They are: “I am a child of God. God is my Father. Heaven is my home. Every day is one day nearer. My Saviour is my brother. Every Christian is my brother too”.
My own experience tells me that when I’m inclined to despair or feel down on myself that it makes good sense to replace the negative tapes with the positive ones.
Our identity, purpose and worth are all tied up in how we see ourselves. Just as it pays to stand back to get a better picture or spend time looking at the big picture it certainly pays to look at ourselves from God’s far bigger and richer perspective.