“So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.” — Matthew 10:31
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During the 2024 Paris Paralympic Games, I saw an interview with a swimmer who had been to multiple Paralympics but never won a medal. This was going to be his last competitive event, having chosen to retire after the Games were over. He spoke to the press after his final race and made a poignant observation about his career when asked about never winning a medal. He acknowledged his disappointment and that it would’ve been great to come away with at least one medal after multiple attempts. However, he noted, he still felt as though he was enough even without one.
“If you’re not enough without a medal, you’ll never be enough with it,” he said.
In our modern day of high-achievement pressures, it can be very easy to have your identity and value tied to your personal production and success. In sports, as well as business, education and general life, there can be a big push from society to produce and prove your worth, instead of just being accepted on the basis of your humanity and innate personhood. This is why many high-achieving athletes, or even corporate leaders, experience depression and other mental health issues — they have failed to build a life outside of what they do, and people only view them for their usefulness and outward success instead of who they are as human beings.
This is where Jesus’ Kingdom turns all this on its head. From the very beginning, when God made mankind in His image, He has created and valued humanity not for their usefulness to Him (for God doesn’t need anything!), but solely on the basis that He loves them and they bring Him pleasure. God delights in and values us not because we can offer Him things, but because we get to become His work of art. What is on the inside — who people are and who they’re becoming — is what matters to God. Jesus said in Luke 12:6-7 that if His Father couldn’t forget the sparrows, of how much greater value are we to Him than the birds (to the point where He can even number the hairs on our head)!
Especially now, people focus so much on results and outward appearances, but as 1 Samuel 16:7 reminds us, God is more interested in the heart. And we ought to be also. When the culture is fixated on the tangible, the visible, the physical, we choose to follow our Savior’s example and focus on the intangible, the invisible, the spiritual. Therefore, who people are within, and the growing they are doing in the hidden areas where it matters, should be of far more importance to us than their noticeable achievements, their money, their education, their titles.
That swimmer made the choice to base his value on things outside of swimming, and he knows that never getting a medal is no reflection on his personal worth. More of us need to do the same. We could transform our workplaces, our teams, our families and our personal lives if we all understood that doing life with God is about far more than what we earn or do in this world. We can’t take any of these earthly accomplishments out of here (Psalm 49:17; 1 Timothy 6:7), but we can build a life that will last, and know our identity is secure in the only One who gives any of us our true worth.
— Katherine Singer
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