Love = Worth

What do you love most? What is of greatest worth to you?

This I love, my family.

With Valentines just past I thought it might be a good time to look at love. I recently returned home from serving as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saint's for 18 months. I was away from home and living a schedule that didn't stop or change for holiday's or weekends. I came to notice that holiday's only mattered if I made them matter, event's only had worth for me if I gave them worth.

I submit that worth comes from love. Value and the emotional connection (love) we place on an event or person are almost synonymous with each other.

There is a difference in the kind of love I'm talking about. I need to make that distinction. The love I am talking about is true love. The kind movies and fairy-tails talk about hero's fighting for. It's Charity, as the scriptures define it the "pure love of Christ" (Moroni 7:47). It's the love that provides meaning to our lives and gives worth.

For a moment I'd like to discus charity or the "pure love of Christ" in more detail. A perspective that I recently observed is that Jesus Christ loves on an individual basis. I believe that he know's me, on an individual basis. He loves me best because he knows me best. "We love him because he first loved us" (1 John 4:19). I believe also that to love is to truly understand something. The main character in one of my favorite books says it well. He said "I think it’s impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves" (Enders Game by Orson Scott Card). It is my feeling that Christ loves each individual with that love, Charity, the kind that understands, that suffers long, the kind that means something. It also follows logically that if we are each loved with this love that gives worth then we are each of worth, because of that love.

Yet so many in the world don't feel that kind of love. We don't believe we are of worth. There is a lot of talk about self worth. I think if we focused more on Charity, understanding others, we would find worth because of our love for each other. In this world where understanding is valued so little is it any wonder that we struggle to see worth?

~Katie Jean~

Perspectives

Look around you, what do you see?

I am beginning a journey and I'd invite anyone and everyone to come along. I want to understand. That is my quest, to understand more of the world around me and then to act on what I learn. From here on out I plan to post my thought's and ideas. I want to share what I begin to understand, what I already understand and what I'm doing about it.

Where do you begin such a quest? What road do you take? Someone once told be the best place to start is right where you are.

So what do you see? I invite you to stop and look at your surroundings. I am sitting in a room full of things that mean something too me. All of these things belong to me and have meaning. I see my two bookshelves and I love them dearly. They have everything raped up in the pages of those books from religion to science fiction to romance and back. Each book has taught me to look at things from a new perspective. I think that's why I love them so much. :) In another corner of the room there is a small group of porcline dolls, each was given to me and each has a story and a name I have given them as I've grown up. I almost feel that they grew up with me. In yet another corner there are two pictures of two women who have played a huge role in who I am and what I want to become. Each of these objects mean something too me. Perhaps the room you sit in is not a full as memories and objects that are personal to you but I'm sure that there is something you see that is important to you.

So the question to ask is why do these things have worth? Why do they mean something? I think it is the way we view them, it is who we are, our view point, our perspective of the object that gives the object meaning and worth. In essence it is how we feel about it and why we feel that way.

I choose for the things in my life to have meaning. I will continue to see the why, to hold onto the why. I will seek to understand the perspectives of the world around us, especially my own.

~Katie Jean~