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~