Day 6: God affirms our worth
Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them” (Luke 15:1-2).
Our Father, our God, our Lord and Redeemer, Your amazing love transcends all human understanding. You are the Most High Holy God, yet You touch fallen, broken, humanity, and show Yourself to be a "friend of sinners" (Matthew 11:19).
Lord Jesus You underscored our value and our worth through Your life and Your death. And in the pages of the gospels, we see the God of the one—the God who leaves the ninety-nine to find the one lost sheep and brings it home rejoicing. With each example of Your interaction with the one, You show us a God who affirms individual value, individual worth, individual significance.
In choosing to welcome tax collectors and sinners (Luke 15:1), You affirmed the intrinsic value of every person—each created in Your image (Genesis 1:27)—a priceless prototype that cannot be assessed in human terms, or measured in human value (Psalm 49:7-8). You demonstrated Your unconditional love to the discarded and the disdained, as You negated the power of human stigma, neutralized the value of human estimation, and destroyed the weight of human judgment.
Lord Jesus, the world still mauls, and maims, tears down, and devours. So many are seeking worth in spaces that leave them wounded and scarred, bruised and battered. But You are the same yesterday and today and forever (Hebrews 13:8). You are still the God who affirms our worth in a world full of vitriol and negativity, violence and incivility.
O help us to hear Your voice above the acrimony and the animosity, the hatred and the hostility. Help us to touch others with Your heart of love—binding up wounds, pouring in the oil of healing and the spirit of compassion (Luke 10:34). Help us, by our lives and our actions, to point others to Your lavish love and Your healing grace.
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