Price Tags

How priceless is your unfailing love, O God. 

– Psalm 36:7

While shopping for basketball shorts with my daughter, I looked first at the price tags before  presenting the different color and style options to her.  After we had checked out with our sale items, she turned to me and said, “I hope one day I’m rich enough that I don’t have to look at price tags.  Then I can just buy anything I want.”

I was speechless (an infrequent event for my family). Since that day at the mall, I’ve been thinking a lot about price tags.

Today, I was reminded of a Bible Study I taught many years ago on JOY.  During the opening session, I asked the women to fill in the blank of this sentence with the first word that popped into their minds.  You try it!

I am _________________.

What was the first word you thought of?  Interestingly enough, when I asked the participants to anonymously write down their answer on a slip of paper and toss it in a basket, almost 90% of them wrote the same word.  Any guess what it was?

It was “Fat.”  I understood, but was shocked.  We weren’t at Weight Watchers, we were at church.  Why weren’t their words Christian words like beloved, saved, comforted, helped, or joyful?

One reason could be that all of us spend most of our waking hours being bombarded with messages to be someone or something we are not.  Magazines airbrush skinny models.  The fashion industry continues to shrink bathing suits and tank tops.  And cosmetic surgery is on the rise, with Americans spending more than 13.5 billion dollars last year to reshape their bodies.

Wow, that’s a huge price tag!  I wonder what God thinks of all this?  

I’ll tell you what I finally told my daughter at lunch that day at the mall.  While looking into her young eyes I said, “You are priceless to God”.  

How often do we see ourselves from God’s perspective?  Like John, one of Jesus’ disciples and closest friends, we too should call ourselves beloved by Jesus. 

In the King James Version of the Bible, God’s refers to His children as “beloved” one hundred and six times.  Over and over again, God calls you “His beloved.”  You were bought at a price (1 Cor. 6:20).  If God placed a price tag on you it would read: PRICELESS.  

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