life on planet earth on Valuing Others

Gracious and loving God—Father, Son and Holy Spirit: We praise you for how wide, how high, and how deep is Your vast love for all people. Incarnate in Jesus, You offered Your life for the healing ...

The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.

Garry Smalley was a Christian counselor and prolific author. He was known for one particular illustration about the intrinsic value each of us has as children of God. Speaking at a large event, he ask...

Gracious and loving God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit: We praise you for how wide, how high, and how deep is Your vast love for all people. Incarnate in Jesus, You offered Your life for the healing of ...

So how can we form deep Christian convictions without dividing the church? Let’s take a deeper look at convictions themselves. Convictions are like light: they come in many colors and form across a sp...

To value one another is our greatest safety, and to indulge in fear and contempt is our gravest error.

To value one another is our greatest safety, and to indulge in fear and contempt is our gravest error.

In his wonderful book Run with Horses , Eugene Peterson reminds us of many of the ways in which modern life de-personalizes and degrades us. We become a number and not a name. We are valued for wha...

When conflict and division are driving both politics and media (including social media), the contrast between the way of the world and the way of Jesus stands out more than ever. How can pastors, task...

Unable to value, unable to enjoy.

In a commodity culture we have been conditioned to believe nothing carries intrinsic value. Instead, value is found only in a thing’s usefulness to us, and tragically this belief has been applied to p...

A close friend who started a financial loan business took thirty of his executives to the poverty- and violence-filled section of Montreal where he grew up in order to introduce them to the section of...

Gracious Father, too often we base our worth on our performance. We believe if we do well, your love grows, and if we falter, your love lessens. Our God, how far this is from the truth. We confess our...

The attentions of others matter to us because we are afflicted by a congenital uncertainty as to our own value, as a result of which affliction we tend to allow others’ appraisals to play a determinin...

Even for those of us who follow Jesus on a daily basis, the reality is, our sinful nature has infiltrated our minds, and we often find ourselves, either consciously or unconsciously, judging those aro...

Ads sell a great deal more than products. They sell values, images, and concepts of success and worth.”

Psalm 101:3: “I will not set before my eyes anything that is worthless.” The term here—worthless—is a compound, literally: without profit. It is “the quality of being useless, good for nothing.” Pg.11...

Sometimes you will never know the value of something, until it becomes a memory.

A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life depend on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have r...

A few years ago, students at Harvard University were asked to make a seemingly straightforward choice: which would they prefer, a job where they made $50,000 a year (option A) or one where they made $...

Selfish people pursue gain at others’ expense. But God’s riches are infinite. When you serve Him and others, you store up treasures in Heaven. This doesn’t reduce the treasures available to others. Ev...

Eternal values, not temporal ones, should become the deciding factors for your decisions.

Heavenly Father, we confess that we often place value in things that are important, but which may not be fully reflective of your desires. We admit that we settle for things that seem good, but don’t ...

Suppose my god is sex or my physical health or the Democratic Party. If I experience any of these under genuine threat, then I feel myself shaken to the depths. Guilt becomes neurotically intensified ...

Until we learn to love others as ourselves, it's difficult to blame broken people who desperately try to affirm themselves when no one else will.

In her excellent little book ( Mythical Me ), Richella Parham describes how her meditation on the Trinity helped her escape the comparison and competition trap: The relationship among the Father, So...

Cultures like ours encourage us to consider all aspects of our lives in terms of self-interest. How do we cultivate a life marked by God’s love – a love that is always directed toward the needs of oth...

Those who give, receive back in turn. By spending ourselves for others’ well-being, we enhance our own standing. In letting go of some of what we own, we better secure our own lives. By giving ourselv...

What you do in your house is worth as much as if you did it up in heaven for our Lord God.

Talking about affluence and privilege is hard, but it doesn’t have to be. I am continually grateful for the perspectives of people outside my own fold. Like Dr. Martin Luther King, for instance, who t...