Net Worth

Net Worth

“… Not as man sees does God see, because man sees the appearance but the Lord looks into the heart.” (excerpt)  1 Samuel 16:7

            I know it is April, but March Madness continues with us. My family is excited about the Wisconsin Basketball Badgers being in the national playoff game tonight against Duke (as I write). We are also enjoying a new basketball net that Steve had been struggling for, over my rather lukewarm interest, for months. Steve’s was a hard fought battle choosing and ordering the hoop, pushing me to ask the neighbors if placing a basketball hoop on our sidewalk would be agreeable to most of them, then pressing on through parts breaking, waiting for their replacements, patiently attacking assembling the goal in spite of confusing instructions, setbacks, and backwards moments, then positioning it out on the sidewalk, and finally filling the base with hundreds of pounds of sand. We both hope that sucker’s not going anywhere for a loooonngg time! We have loved shooting baskets over the weekend, certainly more so because of knowing the effort put into it.

            Steve knows the desire he had in his heart for this basketball hoop. He knows the eye rolls I gave him, the questioning, the bits of stonewalling he had to climb over with me, and the inner voice that called him to press on in spite of my lack of motivation. He knows the frustrations he had in constructing it. But, to look at it from the street, it just looks like any other basketball hoop. It looks pretty much the same as the hoop that the neighbors across the street put up just a few days before we put up ours. But, Steve knows what victory this stanchion at our driveway represents, and what potential it has for the good of our kids and ourselves. He knows he was right to fight this battle and saw it through to win.

            As I understand it, from all the Sunday school classes, youth group meetings, sermons, and homilies I’ve sat through (and mostly listened to… minus a large section of my late teenage years), this is how they say it is with God as a good Father-Builder too. Our Holy Builder knows each and every struggle from the first cells meeting and dividing, to the miracles of surviving childhood, through the challenges, stonewalling and eye rolling of teenage years, and God knows what filling was done with the sandy ballast of life experiences all the way into adulthood. God knows what community had to be on board, what pieces got broken, what parts got put on backwards at first, what waiting there has been, what had to be replaced, in what order and to what tightness all the nuts and bolts and springs are set in each life. We are set up as victorious stanchions, often looking more or less the same as anyone else in our day-to-day meeting. But, God knows the uniqueness in the heart of our presence. He knows all the billions of cells, hundreds of organs, trillions of situations, and trials it took to get us into place – Your Holy Builder knows the whole of your “net worth,” and that your importance and purpose goes far beyond what you look like from the people who might pass you on the street. Because of how you are built, you’ve got game. You are the reason for the game in front of you.

            Something of this line of thought got me remembering an acronym used in OT for charting on patients: WNL. It stands for “within normal limits.” Typically, when someone hits OT performance goals and can be discharged it is because they have gotten to the point where they function “within normal limits.”  But this rarely covers the enormity of the fight and awesomeness it takes for a person to recover from an injury to look or function like “normal” again. We should really call it “within incredible limits,” because we all function within our own set of incredible limits.

            Dear Holy Builder, help me always to look with awe and wonder at my and other’s “net worth.” Help me to face challenges knowing that they are becoming part of the steel, structure, and ballast that makes me stand tall, and gives me a unique story that will give life to the game in front of me. Help me to always remember that I, and every individual around me, may look or feel “normal” but really is working “within incredible limits,” perfectly and wonderfully made in the infinity of your Divine images. Amen.