One of my favorite stories

Here is one of my original favorite stories. I’ve been telling this one for years. I call it 

The Allegory of a Diamond

Imagine a diamond the size of a baseball. Yes, a baseball-sized diamond. Imagine it is perfectly cut - Perfectly clear. A perfectly exquisite diamond. How much would a diamond like this be worth? It’s PRICELESS.  

Now imagine we take this diamond into the cow pasture and roll it around in the muck, and the mire, and the cow manure. How much is it worth, then?    STILL PRICELESS … but only if you know what it is.

Once it’s covered up in all that mess, you may not recognize it and reject it as just a big ball of nasty. 

But if you know what it is, you still want it - no matter how nasty it is. It is still that exquisite, priceless diamond underneath it all. 

As a creation of God - created in God’s image, we are exquisite, but life tends to roll us around in the muck, and mire, and cow manure. We look at ourselves and each other and see all that mess. So we may treat ourselves and each other like crap. 

But God still sees that exquisite creation underneath it all. The spiritual purpose of life is to clean all that stuff off to show just how amazing we really are. We are still that exquisite creation. 

The truth is, we’re still priceless.