Scripture
Isaiah 64: 8b
“We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of you hand.”
Jeremiah 1: 5
“Before I formed you in the womb I know you, before you were born I set you apart.”
Romans 12: 25 – 26
so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honoured, every part rejoices with it.
Reflection
I have been thinking a lot lately about the beginning of William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 29 which begins;
When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
I wonder how many of us spend time in our lives comparing ourselves to those around us. In all honestly that was how I spent most of my younger years. It seemed very easy for me to look at those around me and compare myself to them. As I compared myself to them I found that oftentimes, in my own mind, I never measured up. There were those who were more outgoing. There were those who seemed to have so many friends. There were those who were much smarter than I, in school. There were those who were better athletes, more muscular, seemed to be good at every sport they tried. It seemed to be a constant cycle of looking at others, comparing myself to them, and finding out that I didn’t, in my own mind, measure up. The challenge becomes when this practice feeds into those little negative voices in our heads that like to tell us that we are not quite good enough, not as good as those around us, that we just don’t measure up. But let’s be honest, we don’t always need those little inside voices telling us this, we have those people in our lives who tell us, in so many ways, that we don’t quite measure up. Those people who seem to make it their lives work to dissect everything do and criticize it, finding every little thing that they think we did wrong and then point it out to us. I wonder how many of us have had those negative people in our lives.
As much as I understand the idea of being created by the Divine, as much as I understand, and believe that we are created in love, it can be so difficult to counter those negative voice in our own heads. It can be so difficult to stay positive, to believe our worth, in the face of those negative people in our lives. I have often spoke about the idea that that negative voice in our heads, or that negative person in our life, chips away, slowly, at our sense of self. It chips away at our self-esteem, so that we actually come to believe those negative voices, that we are what they believe about us. And yet, I know that there is more. I know that I am better than what those negative voices tell me that I am. I wonder how often we we get lost in the negativity of this world and forget that there is more.
Our world seems to built for pitting one against the other. It a world where many of us have heard that old saying, “keeping up with the Joneses!” It is a world where we are supposed to buy all of newest gadgets, where kids are told they need to be dressed in name brand everything, where we have to have the biggest, the newest, and the best of everything. If we don’t then we just really don’t measure up to what the world expects of us. All of this can feed into the negative self-talk that tells us that we are not good enough. “When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes!” When we feel as if we can’t measure up to what the world says is important, do we tell ourselves that we are in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes?
Yet, I wonder if we realize that for God we are always worthy. I remember having a conversation with someone and I used a statement that I heard years ago that says, “in God we are always better than that worst we have ever done.” It is in allowing this world to beat us down that we come to see ourselves as unworthy. It is allowing those negative voices inside us to bring us down that we find ourselves unworthy, yet we are always worthy solely for the fact that we are. We are worthy because we exist. If could truly begin to understand that, to live into that, to embody that, would our lives and the world change. I wonder if we come to see ourselves as inherently worthy would we begin to see others as inherently worthy as well. Would we begin to live as if all of us were created in the Divine and as such deserve, love, compassion, mercy, and respect. If we truly lived into this understanding, how might our world change?
Prayer
God of Mercy, we ask that you help us to always your presence with us, especially when we are feeling unworthy, not good enough, or disgraced because we don’t feel that we have met the expectations of the world. Give us the wisdom to remember that in you we are always worthy and loved. Help us to remember that in our worthiness, others are worthy too. Help us to see all of us as creations of the Divine and as such inherently worthy. We ask this in the. name of the one who came and included the outcast, your son, Jesus. Amen.
Minister
Grey Street United/ The Big Red Church (Gordon-King Memorial United)