I Am Treasured

Since you are precious and honored in my sight, and because I love you.

—Isaiah 43:4

It sits in the top corner of my closet, covered in dust. But don’t let the dust fool you. Treasure hides inside.

Old books bury it, as well as random papers and a giant plastic tub of last winter’s clothes. An outsider would never notice it amid all the clutter. Smaller than a shoebox, it was made of wood by unknown hands decades ago. The box itself is nothing special. Without lining, engraving, or decor of any kind. It is stained a deep, rich mahogany with tarnished brass braces that hug the lid to the base. Marred long before my time, littered with scratches on its cover and sides.

Inside, I’ve collected my most treasured items. Nothing of real monetary value, nothing the world would chase after, but items that mean the world to me just the same. These are the things I’d grab in a fire.

The bedtime book I read to my children so many times over the years that I’ve memorized each word.

My grandfather’s royal blue handkerchief, embroidered with small white flowers.

A collection of silver dollars given to me by my grandmother, a woman I didn’t have enough time to know.

A short, handwritten love note on a torn scrap of paper from my soft-spoken husband.

Behind each treasure sits a story. And behind each story stands a person. And behind each person lies a deep well of love.

It takes a lot for something to become treasure-box worthy. Not every trinket ends up with sacred space. Plenty of vacation memorabilia and homemade cards never make it to the twelve-by-eight-inch mahogany womb. They may end up in a tub in the crawl space or stacked high on that same shelf in my bedroom closet. Valuable? Yes, of course. But the items inside the treasure box are more than valuable.

They’re irreplaceable.

I’ve long dreamed of being that kind of priceless, of being treasure-box worthy.

As a young girl, I believed I’d find my treasure status in a relationship with a man. So I got married. But marriage didn’t resolve my insatiable need for significance.

Then I turned to mothering. Surely motherhood would give me a constant assurance of significance.

Pardon me while I spew coffee out my nose.

I enjoy being a parent and love my children more than words can say. But my attempts to earn my worth through mothering usually evaporate by midafternoon, when the complaints and needs and never-ending crises zap the last of my patience.

So I focused on my work. If I couldn’t be treasure-box worthy in marriage and mothering, I could take a serious shot at it with my career. Then followed long hours and impossible expectations. The moment one project was completed, another three took its place. The work was never done. Worse? I was exhausted from trying.

It’s what we all do to some extent, isn’t it? Behind our tireless striving lies a deep desire to prove our worth, to display our merit and achieve treasure-box status.

Yet it doesn’t take long to discover we’re fatally flawed. In spite of our best efforts, we look far more like the beat-up box than a treasure worthy of hiding inside. Value? What value? Then, consumed as we are with our insignificance, we turn around and use the same impossible scale to weigh everyone else.

Thank heaven, God chooses His treasures a different way.

God has an eye for treasure. When He looks at us, He doesn’t see a worn and worthless trinket. He sees a story. And a person behind the story. And a love beyond comprehension.

All those days and years spent trying to earn treasure-box status? Unnecessary. All that worry over whether you’ll measure up? A waste. You’ve already been deemed precious and honored.

Exhale, my friend. You’re worth grabbing in a fire. No more killing yourself trying to secure sacred space in the divine’s box of incomparable treasure.

You already have it.

In a world that relentlessly reduces us to skin and bones, our God speaks abundant, outrageous life. He creates. He renovates. He turns trash into treasure, fish into a feast, and a nearly invisible grain of faith into a mountain-moving force.

—Bo STERN, RUTHLESS