The story is told of a well-known Christian speaker who started off his meeting to a packed hall, by opening up his wallet and taking out a crisp unused twenty pound note. Holding the note high in the air, he asked if anyone in the hall would like it. In the room where people had travelled from all over the country to hear him speak, a forest of hands went up. He smiled and said, “But first let me do this,” he crumpled the note in his hands, dropped it on the floor and then crushed it under his shoe. Picking it up, by now all crumpled and dirty, he held it up again and asked his audience, “Now who would still like this twenty pound note?” again a forest of hands shot up.

The speaker smiled again, looked at his audience and said, “My friends in Christ, you have all learned a valuable lesson today. No matter what I did to this money, you all still wanted it, because even crumpled and dirty, it did not decrease in its value."

I’m sure there are many times in our lives, when we are crushed and ground into the dirt by the decisions we make and the circumstances that come our way, then we too feel as though we are worthless and unwanted. But no matter what has happened, or what will happen in the future in our lives, not one of us will ever lose his or her value in God’s eyes.

To him, dirty or clean, crumpled or finely dressed, we will always be his children, made in his image and likeness and by our baptism; we have been given a share in God’s own nature.

We are temples of His Holy Spirit and as such we have immense dignity in our lives, in fact you could say, “That we are all priceless in our own way.”

“A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity;
An optimist sees opportunity in every difficulty.”

Sir Winston Churchill.