The “good news” is that Christmas morning is exactly six months from today!
The “bad news” is – of course, that Christmas morning is exactly six months from today!
Which of course means: It’s time to go shoppin’! Get out the plastic, now!
It is good to know that “we are of value!”
It is good to know that we have worth!
“Each” and “every one of us.” C’mon now, there are no exceptions, none!
It’s good to know that we are of “more value” than many sparrows. I mean – I should hope so! (Which is not to lessen the value of a sparrow!)
I wondered what a sparrow was worth!
Then I wondered what a human life was worth…so I did a little searching…
How much is a human life worth? It’s a question very few of us – have had to answer. But there are those people that do come up with an answer to this question.
In the year 2006 that number was set at 7.4 million dollars.
In the year 2012, the U.S. Office of Management and Budget put the value of a human life in the range of $7 million to $9 million.
A 2008 Time Magazine story looked at it a little differently and talked about the value of “one year of human life.”
They said:
In theory, “a year of human life’ is priceless. But in reality, it’s worth $50,000. That is for each and every year lived.
That’s the “international standard” most “private and government-run health insurance” plans worldwide use – to determine whether to cover “a new medical procedure.”
More simply put, insurance companies calculate that to make a treatment worth its cost, it must guarantee one year of “quality life” for $50,000 or less.
New research, however, would argue that that figure is way too low.
Stanford economists have demonstrated that the average value of a year of quality human life is actually closer to about $129,000.
There are plenty of documented cases of “wrongful death awards” reaching or exceeding $100,000,000.
Life can be very valuable indeed.
So the numbers are all over the place.
Which begs the question: what actually is a sparrow worth?
Well, not very much. In Jesus’ day two sparrows were sold for a Roman penny.
Two pennies made farthing.
A farthing was 1/64 of a denarius.
And a denarius was the average laborer’s wage for one day.
So a common laborer’s daily wage would buy about 130 sparrows.
In Jesus’ day, the poorest of the poor brought sparrows to the temple for their offerings…
It would have been one thing if Jesus had said, “you are of more value than gold, frankincense, and myrrh.”
But “NOOOOOO” he says “sparrows.”
“You are of more value than sparrows.” Gee, thanks. I mean, thanks a lot!
Jesus could not have chosen “a more common metaphor” than “sparrows?”
But hidden in this metaphor, comparing us with the every-day most common, is a word of comfort.
When you look at the media reports for today, the thousands and tens-of-thousands, and hundreds-of-thousands of people alive, today, who are living with real suffering, appalling suffering, when you see these multitudes of people pictured in the newspaper or online, people who are nameless to us, so many, and with such monochrome and appalling suffering, they may appear to us like sparrows, one suffering face indistinguishable from the next.
Just another face…But, they do have value, each one, individually, have value, and worth; they are known and loved eternally by God.
Like sparrows to us, they may seem indistinguishable; to our God they are known by name.
We should remember that – as we look upon the masses of suffering people – how we pray for them – and act on their behalf – on behalf of at least some of them. We should also try and remember this metaphor about the sparrows.
Some day we also may feel like one of those sparrows as we face our own kind of suffering.
There may be for us, sooner or later, a comforting reminder in this metaphor about the value even one little sparrow, that God knows us by name and sees in us something “precious and of eternal value.”
Just so you know, today I am telling you that you are priceless! You are! You are of eternal value…
But remember, so is everybody else! Everybody!!!