Somewhere in a backcountry town in America, an old man found a dollar bill in the street. He picked it up off the ground and sat down on the sidewalk, holding the broken piece of paper between his fingers. The dollar bill was partly covered in dried mud and dirt, worn to shreds and broken.

“I wonder what your story is” said the man looking with his gentle eyes at the threadbare bill.

“I’ve been through a lot” answered the bill. “Some much has happened to me in all these years. I am very weary and hurt.”

The old man’s eyes grew in awe and wonder, as he stood there looking at the paper talking in his hands.

“I come from the same place where all money comes from” the bill went on. “I was printed one day with millions of other dollar bills, and found myself in this world of which I knew nothing about. My life begun in a little town – just like this one. For a while I brought food to families, toys to children, books and music to the community. Life was good to me, but one day, by mistake, I ended up on a bar top under an empty whiskey jar, then in a back alley in a suitcase. One late night a man threw me on the nightstand in a dirty motel room, next to an ashtray filled with cigarette butts. A young woman was crying close to me in the dark.”

The old man didn’t say a word and just listened.

“One day, a lad crashed me in his fist and threw me on the ground. I’ve been going with the wind ever since, just as you see me now, broken, shattered and alone. I don’t know where I’ve gone wrong. I’ve brought pain to others and hurt people. I didn’t mean to do it. Their tears fell on me.”

The man reached in his pocket and pulled out a couple of other bills that looked to be almost new, and put all of them together.

I don’t know what you’ve been through he thought to himself, but you have the same value as any other bill, old or new. What you’ve been through doesn’t change your value and your worth.

God thinks the same way about you. Maybe you went through a lot in life, you might have made choices that hurt you and brought pain to others, and you suffered greatly when you acted against truth and love. Regardless of what you’ve done or what you’ve been through in life, you have the same worth just as everybody else, and you are equally precious in the eyes of our Heavenly Father. You are His son or His daughter, and you are precious just the way you are.”

Dr. Dragos