I remember reading of a sociological study in which poor children were asked to estimate the size of a quarter. Invariably they drew a circle much larger than an actual quarter. They supersized the thing they valued. We do the same -- not in actual, tangible size, perhaps -- but we give greater space, greater "weight" to the things most valuable to us.
And we devalue the things we look down upon. On the street, to "dis" is to disrespect, diminish, make less important and less valuable. Someone's diss opens the door to all kinds of "justifiable" retaliation.
I was struck recently with just how key this notion of value is to the process of healing. Consider this -- if you were devalued as you grew up and shown repeatedly that you were not important to the world around you. If you were ignored by the busy, important people around you, pushed to the side in favor of other, more pressing matters -- sometimes physically pushed to the side, sometimes emotionally --the result would be your seeing yourself as transparent, weightless, in a sense -- without substance or power to make changes in your environment
You are marginal, and no one cares about you.
Some who are pushed aside lash out against that sense of weightlessness with an emotional script that runs something akin to what plays out on the street when one person is dissed by another.
You think I don't matter? You think I'm inconsequential? Well, watch this...
A courtroom scene was described to me recently:
The judge was awestruck by the support given a particular offender. His advocates stood beside him and vouched for his value. He is worth the trouble, they said, with their words and presence. He matters. He is not invisible. We care what happens to him. He will not pay us anything. He does not owe us anything. We just care about him and what happens to him. We think he makes a diffference in this world.
What strikes me is the similarity between this scene and the scene played out in the Heavenly Court, when Jesus Christ stands in our staid -- interceding for us, defending us, telling God -- She's important to Me. I planned her! I would lay down my life for her.
There is great healing in realizing that you matter -- that you have weight -- that you are not "nothing"-- that someone will take time to listen to you, to notice that you exist, that you have something to say. It is amazing to find it in another person -- but it is almost incomprehensible to find it in God Himself.
What is man that you are mindful of him, wrote David in the book of Psalm.
How could this speck of dust floating randomly in space catch Your attention -- why would we matter at all to You?
Yet, amazingly we do matter to God. He is intimately acquainted with us -- He knows us through and through and He cares.
You have searched me and known me...You are intimately acquainted with all my ways...You have enclosed me behind and before, and laid Your hand upon me. Psalm 139:3
And because we matter to Him, we can care about others and give them weight, and that's a good thing.
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