Day Three: O Holy Night

Reading (by Erin Mashaw)

Once, when I was younger, I got lost and separated from my mom at a store. I don’t remember exactly what distracted me, but I stopped to see something and when I looked back, my mom was gone. I don’t remember how it happened, but I remember feeling so afraid.

Oh, no! I had become one of those lost kids I’d always heard about. What if I never found her again? What if she just went home and I was forgotten forever? What if… what if… what if?

I was so scared.

But then somehow, over the almost deafening sound of my own racing heart, I heard it. I heard her. I heard the voice of my mom. She was looking for me, calling out my name as she came to find me, confirming to me that I was worth finding.

Think about the people of God who had been living during all those years of waiting before Jesus finally came. They would have grown up learning that a Messiah would one day come. They’d been doing their best to follow the law, honoring the generations before them, trusting that God would deliver them, but having no idea how he would do that or what it would mean for them.

So often, we do the same. We move through our days, weeks, and months, living our lives making the best choices and plans we can but without a deep sense of meaning or confidence in who we were made to be. Sometimes we wonder if we matter or if it would make any difference at all if we weren’t here.

But God sent Jesus to change all of that. He knows our worth and our value because he built it into us! We are image-bearers of the God of all creation.

And when God sent his only son, Jesus, to live among us, to be God with us, he was reminding the world that we were worth pursuing. From the moment sin separated us from him, God’s plan has always been to make a way back for us. And on that night, over 2,000 years ago and every moment since, God is relentlessly coming after us. When he appeared, the soul (for the first time ever) truly felt it’s worth. We are not lost and alone.

And while the voices of our day might want us to believe that we are what we can achieve, Jesus entered the scene with a different message—one of hope…

Someone is looking for you. Someone is coming for you. You are worth finding. 

How do you measure your own success and worth? What would it look like to live fully confident that your worth is found in Jesus alone?

Prayer:

“Heavenly Father, help me to be mindful of ways I try to determine my value apart from you. Help me to remember I’m made in the image of God.”