Value and Worth Before God and Hopefully Before Each Other

LIfe is sacred. Human life should be treated with dignity and respect from the womb to the day of natural death. In a perfect world, no person should ever feel they have no value or worth to others. They certainly all have value and worth to God.

Each month, that is in my heart as I teach my little nursing home art class.  While I do love art and feel creativity is an essential part of humanity, the art is secondary to my primary purpose. I want each elderly student to feel loved, valued, and worthy of my time. If they draw a nice picture, that is icing on the cake.

Yesterday, as always, even those who have never drawn anything made a recognizable dog. The picture at the top of the blog is by a man who had never drawn anything before. His wife of fifty years, visiting for the day, was sitting beside him. She verified she had not once seen him draw even a stick figure.

“How’s my dog?” he asked me.

“Perfect,” I told him.

“Take the picture with the photo beside it,” he told me. “That way you can see how close I came.”

His wife smiled at him.

As I was cleaning the room, I asked one woman if she had enjoyed the class.

“Oh I can’t draw a dog,” she said, laughing.

I held up her picture.

“Is this a dog?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Did you draw it?”

“Yes.”

“Well then, I guess you can draw a dog.”

“Yes...I guess I can.”

One man who had been in the arts growing up drew a gorgeous dog...and then doodled a lovely house in the mountains on the top of his page. I asked him about the little house drawing.

“That’s my home,” he told me. He talked about his career and the cold winters where he had settled. The class emptied and he drew little pictures of buildings he had designed as an architect, telling me for what purpose they were designed as he sketched each one.

We sat chatting several minutes in the quiet of the empty activities room. I glanced at my watch. “Well, I have to get back to my own dog,” I said.

“Goodbye,” he said, standing slowly and gathering the pictures he had created, “Thank you for spending time with us.”

We are to be more like Jesus every day if we take the Bible seriously.  I often ponder what that looks like in everyday life. Jesus didn’t seem to spend much time with the wealthy, strong, or powerful. His recorded days were mostly spent with the wounded, the poor, the dying, the discarded, the downtrodden, and the despised. He did not come to make a name for Himself in the world, but to make sure OUR names were written in the Book of Life. His love was never self-serving, but always self-sacrificing. 

Lord, may your mission be MY mission. Empower me to be more like you despite every natural inclination to care only for myself.

The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; (Isaiah 61:1)

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