This week's Theme: Image-Bearers
Day 1: Intrinsic Value
A dear relative is battling deep grief over the loss of a spouse. Another struggles daily with the painful effects of an unsuccessful surgery. A friend is completely incapacitated by a debilitating disease and needs to be fed, bathed, clothed, changed, turned. The condition is only expected to get progressively worse.
These are but a few of the challenges that touch our lives and those within our circles. Like me, you may have heard, or even uttered the heart-cry:
“Why am I here?”
"Why am I still here?"
"Why doesn't God just take me (or other person)?
"Why does God allow suffering?"
We do not have pat answers. We know that pain and loss and the various difficulties and struggles of life are real and present, and are often overwhelming. But without minimizing them or underestimating their impact, should we perhaps consider that the weight of our struggles may be increased by the perception of "value" in our human systems and culture?
That the underlying Utopian mindset of youth, wealth, health, prowess and ability can easily seep into our psyche, challenging our worth, our purpose, our very existence? That value, and worth, purpose, and existence may look very different from the perspective of heaven?
My thoughts travel to the beloved Christmas classic, It’s a Wonderful Life. It tells the story of George Bailey, a small-town banker with the local building and loan. On Christmas Eve 1945, after yet another crisis thrust on him, George weighs a life full of frustrating difficulties, excessive demands, “fruitless” sacrifices and unfair rewards. He seriously considers suicide. But in answer to his family’s prayers, a guardian angel, Clarence, is assigned to save George’s life.
When George voices the wish that he had never been born, Clarence employs a strategy of showing George the threads of life that had been interwoven with his own, and what they would have looked like had he never existed.
It’s a Wonderful Life may not hold the most solid lessons in theology, but it drives home a central point supported by Scripture, that all life holds value and purpose, and that value and purpose are more far-reaching, collective, and interdependent than we often consider.
I immediately saw this relationship between individual value and collective impact when I read the story of LeRoy Colombo (1905-1974). Only a relatively small geographic radius within the state of Texas bore witness to the life and death of this largely unknown individual— his name probably holds little or no recognition outside the city of Galveston. Yet, in all the threads that connect the people, places, and events of the world, who knows how far-flung may be the impact of this one life?
After having lost his hearing, speech and the use of his legs from an illness at around the age of seven, LeRoy Colombo was put through a rigorous homemade rehabilitation process by his brothers—a regimen of being dragged repeatedly up and down a neighborhood alleyway. Along with swimming, this “therapy” somehow worked to coax life back into his legs.
But the hearing disability remained, and Colombo was determined to be “ineducable” by the Galveston Public School System. He was sent to Austin, to the Texas School for the Deaf (TSD).
It was at TSD that LeRoy Colombo joined the world of competitive swimming, and by the time he returned to Galveston six years later, he had already established multiple records. Eventually, he became part of a highly distinguished cadre of lifeguards, having attained the exceptional accomplishments needed for membership. Without the ability to hear sound, he relied on vision for his critical life-saving tasks.
LeRoy Colombo established a record in the Guinness Book of World Records for saving over 900 lives. A plaque erected in his honor along the seawall by the City of Galveston and other area organizations gives tangible, lasting, recognition to his impressive, amazing, life work.
Perhaps no comprehensive list exists of the nine hundred plus lives he saved. But both in the observable spheres of time, space, and experience, as well as in the unknown mysteries of threads, ripples, and echoes, who knows the full tally of outcomes, influence, impact, or meaning attached to the life of LeRoy Colombo?
Or, for that matter, any other life? His brothers, for instance, who administered creative "therapy" to lifeless legs that would later kick and thrust towards the rescue of nine hundred plus individuals? Who knows the impact and influence of the countless other unknowns who sow into the lives of others even in their frailties and incapacitations:
My grieving aunt who remains the much-loved matriarch of her large, extended family, conserving and dispensing treasures of wisdom, heritage, history, faith...
My relative, who, despite the constant pain and discomfort never misses an opportunity to spread joy in every contact through humor, wit, and words of wisdom; who prays for me, encourages me, and cheers me on through difficulty and discouragement.
My friend, totally dependent on others for every need, yet who gives me new perspective on life, hope, and endurance as we read Max Lucado together and share silent laughter, silent tears, wordless understanding.
I am only one of the lives touched by this small sample of individuals. But in the grand scheme of life, who can calculate the impact of each life on another, despite our vast array of limitations? For God does not assign value in human tender—with human scales, weights, balances, and currency. The Sons of Korah speak of human inability to "trade" within God’s valuation system:
No one can redeem the life of another or give to God a ransom for them— the ransom for a life is costly, no payment is ever enough… (Psalm 49:7)
Scripture constantly overturns our faulty, distorted, worldly expectations, valuations, and standards. God’s assignments are often entrusted to those who would be in human estimation, too old, too young, too insignificant, too lost…
Our view of many characters in the Bible is now favorably influenced by time, distance, and hindsight, but we have only to look at the accounts in their context to see the “too much”, the “not enough,” and the other "inadequacies" that defined them in real time.
But God’s vision, purpose, plan— God’s ways— are as high above ours as the heavens are higher than the earth (Isaiah 55:9). Human eyes see through prisms of weakness, disability, and diminishment. But in the eyes of God our intrinsic worth, value, and purpose are beyond human estimation— assigned to us by none other than God — as image-bearers of God Himself (Genesis 1:27).
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