Tuesday, August 16, 2011

You Are Important

I'm going to write about something else that was in "The Help". That's the movie I saw last weekend about colored housemaids and the white women they worked for in Mississippi back in the 1960s. There are so many good lessons in that movie about love and the messages are still going around in my mind.

The colored maids raised the little white children because their mothers couldn't be bothered. They were the only real mothers the kids had known, and they loved them and raised them as if they were their own.There was one little white girl about 2 or 3 that was a bit pudgy but precious. Her mother had nothing to do with her and the maid was afraid she never would because "she aint gonna win no beauty pageants".

Every day the maid would tell the little girl "You is kind. You is smart. You is important". Every day. At the end of the movie when the maid was fired she asked the little girl if she remembered what she had told her and the little girl said "You is kind. You is 'mart. You is 'portant".

Anyway, my point is, don't we all need to hear those words every day? Sometimes every second of every day. I wish I'd said that every day to my daughters when they were growing up. I wish my mother had said that to me every day. I tell my granddaughters how lovely and loved they are every chance I get.

We are all special and unique because God made us that way. He fashioned us out of love and wove us into His own image. But our culture begs to differ and convinces us we are not enough or we are too much or we are insignificant (Satan does this also). We rarely feel good about ourselves. We see ourselves as we think the world sees us and not how God sees us.

God sees us as His beloved children and important enough to give His own son to die on the cross for us. Let's start seeing ourselves through God's eyes and let's tell the people we love every day how important they are.

"You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body, and knit me together in my mother's womb. Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous-how well I know it. You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion, as I was woven together in the dark of the womb. You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed. How precious are your thoughts about me, O God. They cannot be numbered! I can't even count them; they outnumber the grains of the sand! And when I wake up, You are still with me!", Psalms 139:13-18. NLT 

2 comments:

  1. My son, who teaches special education, has a motto on his classroom wall, "Be present, be productive, be kind."

    Your post reminded me of that motto. Probably Proverbs says it best when we are told, "Charm is deceptive and beauty is fleeting, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised."
    Blessings to you - Marsha

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  2. Yes, we all need these reminders. I want to do better about reminding my children of their importance... not just to me, but to God. Can't wait to see this movie:)

    peace~elaine

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