Worth

[context: working as a Pastoral intern at the Boys and Girls Home for the summer]

The other day, I led a Bible study here at the Boys and Girls Home for some of the newer guys. At first, we just talked about life--the bad stuff we’ve done in our pasts, the mess we’re in now, how cruel life’s been. So I asked the question: 

   What are you worth?

Are you worth more than the life you’ve been given? The situations in which you’ve been placed? The things that have happened to you? Are you worth more than the quality of life you have right now?

Without a hesitation, an adamant “yes” from every guy. So what are you worth? “Everything.” That one word--“everything”--released from the breath of the youngest, invaded the room, filling the spaces between each of us. Whether that one word captured the inner voice of everyone in the room, or whether the conviction in which it was said was so sincere, or whether the ache for it to be true outweighed the need to utter an alternative, that one word “everything” connected us and stole the need to speak.

Silence. So loud you almost smarted from it. Then (of course), I talked. I was probably wrong for what I did—I’m usually very wrong. I looked that young boy in the face, who’s struggling through layers and layers of the injury being rejected has caused, and I told that boy, “No.”

To be honest, you’re not worth it. You’re too risky an investment. Too many times you run away. Too many drugs stay in your system. Too many wounds, too much bitterness, too much. It’s not worth unpacking. Even if you change, even if you don’t totally screw up again, your return would never be worth the investment. Everything? You think you’re worth my everything? All of my goals and passions, all of my desires and needs, my very life—you’re worth that? No. You’re too dirty, too stained, too messed up. Not strong enough. Can never be good enough. You don’t deserve anything because you’re just not worth it.

But for some reason that I do not get, you are loved anyway. Despite the risk, the cost, the loss; despite your brokenness, and helpless; despite how many times you’ll walk away and give up on, no, turn your back on him; despite how many times you’ll curse him, and fight him, and criticize him, and doubt him; despite the fact that you will always disappoint yourself and never do enough right—He will love you.

As dirty and untouchable as you feel, you are accepted by the maker of things as intricate as blood cells and as massive as mountain ranges. You are loved and prized by majesty. The God of all, the God who births all life and works to make it good, says you are worth it. And let the one who knows you best and loves you the most anyway tell you your worth.

Finishing my monologue, I gave every guy a copy of the words from the Psalm: “O Lord, you searched me and know me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up…You hem me in, behind and before, and your hand is always upon me…Where shall I go from your Spirit?”

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God, take the stupid works of these barren hands and the crippled words from this broken vessel and use them in spite of me. I pray every child here finds a home in you, where your consuming and steadfast love gently tickles our ears with the assurance that, to you, we are worth it.