Precious People

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Children are precious. Mamas are precious. Daddies are precious. Lots of people know that. However, it is more difficult to remember that the delivery man who is late again is precious and the person making an annoying spam call is precious and the tech support person who finally takes our call is precious.

Yesterday Ray and I started out on our four-hour drive home after celebrating the birthday of one of our grandchildren. We weren’t 15 minutes down the road before we met a truck pulling a trailer. I didn’t notice the driver, but I did notice that he was driving a bit recklessly on his side of the road just before we were to pass by him on our side of the road. Inside our car with the windows rolled up, as I sat in the driver’s seat, I said something to the effect of, “Hey, mister, you need to be more careful with that trailer.” I wasn’t really talking to him. I was telling Ray how I felt about what I had just seen.

Immediately I felt convicted that the person in that truck is a precious human being; and that, even in our vehicle where he couldn’t hear me, I should treat him with respect. Granted, he needed to treat us with respect, too, and not make dangerous moves with the potential of harming us, but I am not in control of that. I am in control of what I say and do.

America would be a sweeter place if more of us understood—and respected—the preciousness of people—with our words and tweets and posts and the other ways that we communicate. Merriam-Webster’s first two definitions of precious are “of great value or high price” and “highly esteemed or cherished.”

We are so precious to God that He gave His precious Son for us. In other words, God cherished us so much that He sent Jesus to pay the high price of dying for us. We need to treat others the way that God treats us and we need to train our children to do that, too. Imagine how the world could change.

Beloved, let’s love one another;
for love is from God,
and everyone who loves
has been born of God and knows God.
The one who does not love does not know God,
because God is love.
By this the love of God was revealed in us,
that God has sent His only Son into the world
so that we may live through Him.
In this is love, not that we loved God,
but that He loved us and sent His Son
to be the propitiation for our sins. 
Beloved, if God so loved us,
we also ought to love one another.
1 John 4:7-11

 

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