DAILY DEVOTIONAL

Tuesday, April 17, 2018

What is our intrinsic worth?

Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care …So, don’t be afraid; you are more valuable to God than a whole flock of sparrows. – Matthew 10:29, 31

Look at the birds of the air: They do not sow or reap or gather into barns–and yet your Heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? – Matthew 6:31

I have two feathered friends who are in conversation with me daily. One is a crow who perches in my mulberry tree; the other, an Orange Weaver finch that sings to me from her perch. The crow was given to me as a gift from the woods; the Orange Weaver finch cost me forty dollars at a local pet shop. The crow was free and remains free; the Orange Weaver finch was costly and now caged.

Christ pointed to sparrows in the field and spoke about the matter of human worth. “Do not think that you, the poor, powerless, disenfranchised, are of no worth. No matter what the rich and the powerful say, “You are of great intrinsic worth in the eyes of God. No matter what the values of some may think … You are of great worth. They try to cage you in their manner of worldly sorting of souls, but in the eyes of the Lord you are of great worth.”

Once we begin to think in terms who is more worthy and who is less worthy … we are living not with godly thought but with worldly thought, not with godly values but with worldly values. And this way of thinking of people in terms of relative worth is a subtle sinfulness which we practice.

That crow … he is a worthy companion in my heart. That Orange Weaver finch … his song is filled with worth. And my sparrows who come and share lunch with me … I am not sure I could flourish without them.

Always in His Service,
Fr. Charitas de la Cruz