Dear RCC Community,
This week’s encouraging words come from our College Captain, Eva Hanna. She presented this devotion at the Senior School assembly. I think it is something we all need to hear and be encouraged by. Please take the time to read, reflect and be encouraged by our students…. Jonno
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Would you agree that the less of an object there is, the more valuable it becomes?
To put this into perspective, how much do you think a pair of Air Jordans (see picture above) are? Brand new and straight from the Nike store.
Well, the answer is $180.
Say there was a pair of Jordan’s going up for sale that MJ (aka Michael Jordan, one of the world’s greatest basketball players) had worn on the court himself in one of his earliest seasons in 1985 (see photo below). This pair? The value would go up right?
Well this pair of shoes was valued and bought for $560,000.
This is because the value comes not from the leather; it’s not the fabric that sets this shoe apart from the others. It comes from the complete uniqueness that only these ones have, that being the one who owned them.
This is similar to us as humans; our value doesn’t, and will never, come from what we look like, the money we own, the shape of our bodies, what our job is, or our social status.
No, our value comes from our Designer, the one we belong to, we’re set apart from each other on PURPOSE.
Think about it for a second. You are SO different to everyone else around you, from your personality, to your hair colour, to the places you’ve lived, to the food you like and dislike. There are so many characteristics that make you different from the person beside you, so much so that you will never actually be them.
And that sounds silly, like of course we’ll never actually BE someone else. But that’s just the point; instead we compare and this is our downfall. And BECAUSE we aren’t someone else, the minute we start to compare ourselves to one another, in whatever it is, the more insecure we’ll become, because we’re not them or we don’t have what they have.
I know that for me, a lot of the time I fall prey to comparison through a lot of things, one of them being my faith or ministry, whether I'm doing enough and so on.
But let me hit you with something, if God didn’t want you or need one of you here in the world, you wouldn’t be here.
Think of all the great Christian people there are, doing great and profound things, writing books, preaching sermons, starting charities, visiting third world countries. If God ONLY needed them, then there would only BE them to shine his light, but no, you’re here, which means He WANTS YOU TOO!
However young or inexperienced you feel, there are people and places that they may not be able to reach; they don’t have the connections you do, they’re not in your soccer team, dance group or workplace. You might be the only taste of Jesus’ love someone is getting, even if all you do is reflect the image and character of Christ, whilst being an encouragement to others with your actions and words, THAT IS MINISTRY.
But, if you DO continually compare your life to another, you’ll miss your originality, you’ll miss the complete purpose that set you apart as His Child.
And if you’re thinking, “Well, I'm too far gone”, or, “I've done some pretty bad things,” that doesn’t change His mind.
God doesn’t just go, “Oh well, she failed this test, wow, now she can’t preach to others'', or, “Well, he had a past addiction, guess I can't save him now, he’s useless.”
At NO POINT were or are you deemed “not-worthy” or “redundant” to the Kingdom of God.
So, with this in mind, rejoice in your authenticity, rejoice that at no point God looked at you and wished he saw someone else. No, he made you. Rejoice, as you are His greatest creation, rejoice in the unique purpose that only you have. You are His.
Eva Hanna
College Captain
