By Pastor Don Schatz

Human Worth

You can listen to today’s devotion by clicking on this SoundCloud Link

“Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them.  Are you not much more valuable than they?”
Matthew 6:26. New International Version

I enjoy going to my local Saturday Farmers Market.  It might be fun to do that in Venice, where the Market comes to you via boat.  But I’m okay with taking myself to the Market.  The variety of produce, the mix of people slowly browsing, visiting and enjoying the day.  God is generous with us to a fault.

There is an obvious path to take with today’s picture.  I am going to take a less obvious path.  Perhaps it is just the way my mind works.  I don’t know who or what to blame for that.  So, with that caveat and perhaps apology, I invite you to take a walk today.

I have been wrestling with a Scripture text today.  It is the text for a sermon I am preparing.  In the light of the tragedy in Israel the text is stretching me a bit.  A good thing, in the end.  I had already selected today’s picture for this devotion.  I guess I should have written the devotion before the sermon!  Does that ever happen to you?  One thing in life leaks into and affects another?  Or one piece of Scripture from our God of Love intersects with world events, and one experiences a dissonance of faith and life.

It would be safer to simply tell you how much God knows our need and well provides.  And of course, he does.  Trust him!  Likely, you do trust him.  I think that God invites me to be part of meeting the needs of those who have less than I.  But what about those in Israel and Gaza?  How can I be an instrument of God’s love and providence there?  How can I not be impacted by the stunning tragedy of human aggression?  I think that human worth, the value of which God himself testifies to in the loving gift of his Son into death to gain us back, must infuse my walk of faith in the world.

So perhaps that is where I start.  Where we start, if you are still with me!  I start by loving you.  By trusting you with a rambling devotion that doesn’t provide much in the way of answers.  But it does provide THE WAY of loving sacrifice.  It does direct us to Christ, always to Christ.  It does praise God that humanity remains the object of his love.  And it does say, “Here am I, Lord.  Send me.”

Copyright, Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Colorado Springs, Colorado