Treasured

As I sat at the playground the other day, watching my kids play, I heard another mother call out, “Treasure!” It took me a moment to realize she hadn’t found something shiny, nor was she playing a game of treasure hunt with her kids. “Way to go, Treasure! You did it!” she yelled as her young daughter reached the top of the rock wall for the first time. Her little girl’s name was Treasure. I had never met anyone with that name before, but it had a sweet ring to it. I felt a sense of amazement as I thought about what it would be like to grow up with a daily reminder of how wanted and loved you are. Does that little girl feel it each time she hears her name being spoken, that she is a treasure to the ones who gave her that name, that she has been a treasure to them since the day she was born? Perhaps she doesn’t notice, since she’s so used to it. After all, she knew it was her name long before she learned what it meant. But it’s got to seep into your soul anyway, doesn’t it, that knowledge that you are someone’s beloved? It’s got to make you blossom more radiantly than you would if you had never been told you were a treasure.

Dear reader, I don’t know if anyone has ever told you, but you are treasured. Maybe you grew up knowing you were loved, hearing and seeing and feeling that love so much that you could take it for granted. Or perhaps you grew up believing the opposite- that you were unloved, unwanted, unworthy. Whatever you were led to believe, I believe it had much more to do with your parents’ own capacity to love and to cope well with the pressures they faced in their own lives than it had to do with your deserving. Little Treasure, she was given her name before she had time to earn it by any efforts of her own. And you, too, were born loved by the One who made you, the One who has loved you every step along the way, whether you made it to the top of the rock wall or not, the One whose love has never depended upon your performance but only on your status as His child.

The Bible says that those who belong to the Lord are his treasured possession (Deut. 7:6). That status of being a beloved child of God belongs to anyone who desires to be His. Living life with him is a great treasure of its own, one that is worth giving up everything we have to obtain (Matt. 13:44-45). And we can know without a doubt that we are treasured because he gave everything, even his own son, for us.

Friend, your Heavenly Father chose to bring you into this world because he loved you and he knew you were a great idea. He has already done the work of redeeming every mistake you’ve ever made and will bring that redemption and restoration to beautiful fruition in your life if you invite him to. Your identity? Well, that’s really all there is to it. You are Created, and you are Redeemed. Whatever names or messages you’ve been given by others along the way, those words belong to whoever tried to put them on you. The name your Creator has given you says only one thing: You are Treasured.