by Pastor Joel Lawler

My eight-year-old son is fascinated with human anatomy. We will often go to bookstores and he will look at books about the different systems of the body. He has several models and wall charts that illustrate anatomy. For his birthday, we took him to Atlanta to see "Bodies - The Exhibit."

The exhibit is real cadavers and individual organs taken from people who donated their bodies to science. There was a room for each system of the body. The specimens were prepared so that the system that they were illustrating was in plain view. The specimens were all positioned in active poses such as playing sports or running. It was absolutely amazing to see the intricacies and complexities that lie beneath the skin.

It took me a while to process the fact that what I was seeing was real human bodies. They were not behind glass and there were no barriers between the viewer and the subject.

About halfway through the exhibit, something hit me. I wanted to know the stories behind these people. There was no flesh so they were not recognizable. There were no names, ages, race or countries attached to the information cards. The bodies had been intentionally reduced down to a pure

scientific display. While they were human, their humanity was gone. I understand completely why the people behind this exhibit would choose to do this. In fact, my wife thought I was being a little morbid for even asking such questions about who these people were.

One of the many things I love about reading the accounts of Jesus' life is that he finds value in each individual that he encounters. He sees beyond the flesh and straight to the heart.

One of my frustrations with fellow Christians is that we have a tendency to do what the scientists did in the body exhibit in that we reduce people down to their mere physical value. They become nothing more than a body or just another person in a sea of people. We attach value based on sex, race, age, nationality, intelligence, beauty, success and income. Just like the exhibit had different rooms, we have different categories that we place people in. We remove their humanity and place them on a pedestal.

I once took a class on evangelism. The curriculum was basically a canned

sales pitch version of the message that Jesus commanded us to share. The story of God's love for us even though we rebelled against him, how Jesus, His son, came to die to pay the penalty for our sin and how Jesus defeated death by rising from the dead was put into a point by point presentation. One of the things that really bothered me was that there was a dry erase board that had lines on it. Each line represented someone who had received the message of God's love for them and accepted Him into their life.

I truly appreciated the exhibition and those people who unselfishly donated their bodies so that we could learn about how God crafted us but there is more to us than the physical. There was no life in these empty shells. There was something missing.

People are also a whole lot more than lines on a dry erase board. You and I are precious to God. He loves each and every one of us completely. We need to see others through His eyes. We need to try to value each person the way that He does. We must see through His eyes how He loves His children.

He sees past the numbers and the masses and sees you just as you are and desires a relationship with you.
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