A THIRD-GRADE class was asked to fill in the blank: "If I could be anyone in the whole world, I would want to be." The students wrote in famous athletes, movie stars, or rock musicians. Only one child wrote "me."

Many people, young and old, are dissatisfied with who they are and suffer from feelings of low self-esteem. Some go through their entire lives feeling as if they just don't matter, that they are of little use or value to anyone, that they are a nobody.

Yet the Psalmist said of God's creation of man, "Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour." And the book of First John assures us, "Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God."

Think of it! Right now we're God's own children, crowned with glory and honor, "a little lower than the angels." How much God must love us! How cherished and incomparable we each must be.

Then why don't we always feel this spiritual value? Because we tend to accept the mistaken sense of ourselves as insignificant mortals, separate from our creator and His love.

When I was growing up, I had a pretty low feeling of worth. It seemed to me that my older sister had many more privileges than I did and that my brother got much more attention and special care because he was the youngest. I just felt as though I filled a slot in between two more special ones. I certainly didn't feel needed. This, together with my being rather shy and sensitive, opened the door to being easily hurt by others. In fact, I unknowingly started my own personal "hurt collection," an accumulation of memories in which I had been hurt by someone. This obviously affected my feeling of worth.

Then one day many years later, after I had married and had children, I was visiting a branch Church of Christ, Scientist, in another town. I don't remember what the particular Bible Lesson (found in the Christian Science Quarterly) was, but I'll never forget the love I felt during that service. I sat feeling totally immersed in this powerful feeling of God's present love, a love that I knew was unconditionally cherishing and embracing each one there, including me. When we left that church, I couldn't stop thinking about or feeling this wonderfully powerful love. I just stayed quiet and remained embraced in it.

As I did so, a total housecleaning of past hurts began. One by one, different situations from the past would come to thought, and with each memory would come the absolute assurance that nothing but this same all-powerful, tender, cherishing love had really been present or had ever touched me. Then that experience would be wiped out, and another would come to be thoroughly purged and destroyed. This went on until it felt as if the whole page had been wiped clean and left brand-new.

Following this was a clear realization that if anything did not come from divine Love, God, then I need never fear it, feel it, be hurt by it, react to it, carry it with me, remember it, or identify with it. I could reject it and go on my way untouched.

Since that time I have had a much more secure sense of worth and of being loved by God each moment. People and situations don't influence me nearly as much as they did before.

Our true selfhood isn't what the imposition of worldly thinking would have us believe it is. The man God made and loves isn't a physical creature, subject to sin and suffering. He's the very likeness of God. And since God is Spirit, His likeness must be spiritual. The Bible tells us this likeness was seen by God to be very good, and to be complete. This is the self we need to understand in order to find our true worth. It's our only real selfhood, and it's indispensable to the one indivisible creation.

Mary Baker Eddy, who discovered and founded Christian Science, writes in her book Pulpit and Press: "You have simply to preserve a scientific, positive sense of unity with your divine source, and daily demonstrate this. Then you will find that one is as important a factor as duodecillions in being and doing right, and thus demonstrating deific Principle."

Preserving a feeling of unity with God involves humble listening to Him through prayer, a surrender of personal ego and human will. It means cultivating a sincere desire to obey God and to acknowledge His presence in everything we do. It means actually doing the good that God is impelling us to do; striving to be all that God is causing us to be and nothing less; living the spiritual qualities that God is expressing in us, qualities such as joy, integrity, purity, peace, love. Feeling genuine worth relates directly to our knowing and obeying God's will. Feeling unworthy results either from ignorance of our spiritual status as children of God or from refusal to yield to the divine will.

A common perception of things would convince us that man is material, sinful, limited, separate from God. This view would have us measure worth strictly by position, appearances, wealth, and so forth. So when we accept worldly standards and live according to them, we never seem quite to measure up. Someone is always more beautiful, rich, popular, or intelligent. Either that, or we worry that at some point we'll lose what we feel makes us worthy. Ultimately, worldly values can lead only to a feeling of worthlessness, because a sense of life separate from God, Spirit, has no genuine substance.

In Christ Jesus, the Way-shower, we find the model for living a life of real worth. Jesus looked solely to God to find what to do, think, say, be. After his baptism, the Bible tells us, there was "a voice from heaven" that said, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." Each of us can come to discern the unwavering approval of our creator as we follow Jesus' teachings. In doing so, we'll be naturally receptive to Christ, the divine influence telling of God's presence and man's immediate oneness with Him. The Christ, so fully embodied by Jesus, is present today, as in the Master's time, to show us our true worth as God's offspring.

The man God created is continuously needed, tenderly cherished. He's complete and abundantly blessed. That's who we really are. That's the selfhood we can progressively see and be—worth duodecillions.