Priceless!

Nearly two decades ago, I was a naïve teenager gazing up at the brilliant night-sky with a heart in anguish. A good friend of mine was suffering from chronic ulcer at that time and I was in great anxiety regarding his health.
As I fixed my eyes on those billions of twinkling dots up in the heavens, a realization entered my mind and pierced my soul. I knew that, if my friend died, I wouldn’t be able to find one so unique to replace him, even in the whole universe.

A reminder came to me in my daily devotion several days ago.
God said in Isaiah 66:1-2, “Heaven is My throne, and the earth is my footstool. Where is the house you will build for Me? Where will My resting place be? Has not My hand made all these things, and so they came into being? This is the one I esteem: he who is humble and contrite in spirit, and trembles at My word.”
Relate these two verses to I Corinthians 3:16 and I Corinthians 6:19, and we come to a shocking truth: “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you? Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God?”

In the Old Testament, God declares that even the whole heaven and earth is not spacious enough to hold His divine being. But in the New Testament, He states that He dwells within the life of each faithful believer who fears and worships Him. The Bible teaches us that every living individual who lives for Christ is a “living tabernacle of God” – the very dwelling place of the eternal, infinite God.
Combine the two statements, and we realize the value of each and every human being on earth: each of us is worth a whole universe in the sight of the Creator!
Isn’t this a marvelous phenomenon?!
There is nothing, not even the whole galaxies, to replace the value of a single soul in the eyes of God! So great is the price He sets for us!

But why?
Why does God cherish and prizes us so greatly and preciously?

The answer is in Genesis 1:27, “God created man in His own image.”
We are created as the copy of the Divine Creator. When God created the first man, He also transferred some of His personal traits to Adam: holiness, perfection, power, immortality, eternal life – things that are so immensely great which even a universe cannot fathom or contain.
Yes, sin did corrupt and marred the image of God within man, robbing us of our divine attributes and confining us to mortality, decay, imperfection and countless limitations. Nevertheless, it did not alter our internal blueprint and value in the sight of God. We are, and will always be, more precious and priceless than the whole universe to Him.
Realizing this great truth, shouldn’t we be more grateful to God for how and what He had created us to be? Shouldn’t we treat our neighbors with more respect and honor, knowing how indescribably great the value of each living soul on earth truly is before the Creator?
Let us all live in awe of God’s greatness shown to us – and in us!
Amen.