What does a really ordinary guy do to understand his value within the world?

A man, I think, generally wants (or needs) to feel that he provides something worthwhile to the people around him. It’s a feeling gained by some innate sense of worth or value – that life would be worse for others if you weren’t around.

I’ve met a few people this fortnight who have exceptional talents – an ultra-distance runner who will be representing his country later this year, a magician who works in schools and churches and who kept my children amazed for a good 30 minutes over lunch, a man who has spent most of his adult life writing children’s songs that are very well known – and suddenly felt incredibly worthless.

Note that it’s not because any of these men went out of their way to make me feel small. That all came from inside. Everyone has talents but some seem to be more highly valued or ’special’.

People like me need to be making a difference.

So I turned to God last night, asking “why am I here? I’m an ordinary guy – why do I exist?” God answered through 1 Peter 2 v 5.

“And you are living stones that God is building into his spiritual temple.” (NLT)

About twenty years ago I worked for a summer at an outdoor centre in Scotland and one of the many tasks that I turned my hand to was building a stone wall. I had to pick stones from around the grounds and somehow make them fit into a wall shape using mortar to bond them together.

The stones were all differently shaped, differently sized, almost like people…

But twenty years later that wall is still standing, still retaining the hillside that we’d cut into to create a car park. And if you took one of the stones out, that part of the wall would be severely weakened if it didn’t actually fall down.

So I’m going to continue to be an odd-shaped, odd-sized stone. And hopefully try to make a difference in the world around me.