I love a good deal! About ten days ago Debbie, Jonathan, Bethany, and I were traveling from Cincinnati, Ohio, to Springfield, Missouri. Sitting in the Chicago O’Hare airport awaiting our flight to Springfield, the gate agent called my name.
“We’re overbooked,” he told me. “If you and your family would be willing to fly out tomorrow morning, we’ll give you four roundtrip tickets to anywhere United flies the forty-eight states. . . We’ll also pay for your hotel tonight and give you dinner.”
For a guy who loves to take his family on little trips, this was a dream deal, a too-good-to-give up offer! “I’m sure we’ll take it,” I responded. “Let me check with my family. I’ll be right back.”
Enthusiastically, I shared the deal. “Just think!” I said. “Four free tickets!”
“What do you think?” I asked. Bethany’s face told her feelings — Her words were soft and kind, “I’d rather go home, dad. Jonathan and I want to go to Des Moines tomorrow and if we don’t get back to Springfield until afternoon. . .” I don’t remember the rest of her words, but I got the drift. Debbie was nodding in motherly agreement. I’m doing the math. . . 4 x $400. . .
“Thanks for the offer,” I told the gate agent. “We need to get home tonight.”
As I have reflected on those few moments, what stands out to me was that Bethany felt safe to express her thoughts and feelings. She knew I wanted to take the free tickets and spend the night in Chicago, yet she felt free to give her opinion. And when I gave up the “deal” for my daughter, I was expressing my value of her.
Once we were comfortably seated on the plane and flying home, I said to Bethany, “While you know I would have been excited about four free tickets, I am more excited that you felt the freedom to share your opinion with me. I just want you to know, honey, I value you a lot more than free flights.”
While giving up four free flights is a rather small thing in the light of the major events of our lives, that experience continues to inform and challenge me.
Just as Jesus valued the leper and touched him – just as Jesus valued Jairus and his daughter and went to her home and raised her from the dead – just as Jesus values each of us so much that He gave up His life so we could have eternal life – so God calls us to value others – to honor and respect them, to put their needs and desires ahead of ours!
How do we show value to our friends, family, and new acquaintances?
• By looking them in the eye when they are speaking to us
• By not insisting on having our way, even when we feel strongly about “our way.”
Jesus views everyone as significant. Zacchaeus was a dishonest tax collector (Luke 19:1-10). Jesus could have ignored him, but He saw him in the tree and called him by name.
It’s important that Christians acknowledge others as people with value. Brennan Manning writes, “A Christian who doesn’t merely see but looks at another communicates to that person that he is being recognized as a human being in an impersonal world of objects.”
Do the people we interact with know that we view them as valuable to us and to God? —Anne Cetas
Burdened people everywhere
Need to know what Christ has done;
They need to feel God’s love and care—
It was for them He sent His Son. —D. De Haan
Love people and not things, use things and not people.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 10th, 2008 at 12:58 pm and is filed under Encouragement. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.