God our Father didn't have to create you, but God chose to create you as a unique individual.
Think of all the beauty and wonder in your life - your family, friends, the beauty of laughter and love, the beauty of nature. God has given you all of this.
In fact, Jesus thanks His Father for us, saying that we are gifts to Jesus that the Father has given Him. Think of how awesome that is: Jesus considers you a gift, wrapped up and with bows on, like a birthday or Christmas gift. He treasures each one of us as we treasure gifts that someone we overwhelmingly love has given us.
Jesus wants, above all, to keep us as gifts forever. He wants us to be everlasting gifts. How can we stay everlasting gifts? We stay as gifts with Jesus forever if we desire to stay so close to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in this life that we will not be separated from God in the next life. God is Love and Mercy Itself. Why would we ever want to live eternally separated from Love and Mercy? From the One Who created us and walks with us and heals us and protects us?
But Jesus also considers us gifts to be given away. Jesus gives us the priceless Gift of the Holy Spirit to fill us with love because God also created us to give the gift of ourselves to others. God's love is not meant to stay in our hearts. It's meant to be shared. Love is always given to us to share!
There are so many human beings whom others do not treat with respect. Or they are treated with fear! Have you ever gone to a store with a person with mental or physical disabilities and seen store clerks look at that person with dislike or fear? I have. It breaks my heart. Have you ever seen posts making fun of senior citizens' bodies? I have. Even a person in the throes of mental illness or dementia or severe physical deformity or dying in Hospice bears the Face of God in his or her soul. Even an infant growing in the womb bears the Face of God in his or her soul: The psalms tell us "You knit me in my mother's womb." Even a smile from us, even a tender touch, is a gift to others, a sign that we respect who they are and Who created them.
You are a gift to yourself, a gift to God, and a gift to others, even if you sit in a wheelchair. Even if your hearing is bad. Even if you can no longer work. Even if your memory is fading. You can still pray for others. You can still smile. You can still love. You can still give the gift of your patience. God will multiply every prayer, every smile, every inner act of love as a gift to Himself and to others.
The more we pray, the deeper we enter into God's heart, where we will find everyone and everything from all ages nestled and warmed by love. Because creation is a gift that God has given Himself! Didn't Jesus tell us that God knows the needs of even His sparrows? That not a hair falls from our heads that He doesn't know about? If all of creation is held in the heart of God, then everyone and everything is interconnected. Everyone and everything is a gift to us. We are gifts to everyone and everything else.
Prayer expands our hearts to the size of God's heart so that everyone and everything receives our loving concern. If we only pray for the people we know and love, if only their concerns move us, then we are allowing our hearts to shrink instead of to expand. The people in Alberta and Saskatchewan, Canada, suffering from an out-of-control fire deserve and need the gift of our prayer as much as the people in the United States. And we in the United States receive the gifts of the prayers of many in India and Africa and the Middle East lifting us up! That's the Body of Christ - we're all connected in his heart. If one of us hurts, we all hurt. If one of us rejoices, we all rejoice. In fact, some would say that the Body of Christ contains all of creation as well because the Father created everything as a Gift for His Son.
When we pray for everyone whom God loves, that is the prayer most pleasing to Him. We may not even like the person we pray for - that doesn't matter. God knows that person' heart. God knows why He created that person and what he or she is capable of becoming.
You are a gift. You are amazing. There never has been, there never will be, another person exactly like you. You have eternal worth. You were created by the Father as a gift to Himself and as a gift to His Son. You, if you stay in love with God, you will spend all eternity loving and being loved by God.
Look at the person next to you. Look at the faces on the front of the newspaper. Look at the faces of the people in the cars around you. God created them too as gifts to Himself. They are ALL amazing to Him, even if we can't see that! He also longs for them to spend eternity with Him.
You can help God. You can help even His most abandoned children to find their ways home to Him. You can be a true gift to others as God longs for you to be. You can pray, especially for those who have not discovered God yet. You can pray for all those who are in the depths of despair. You can pray for those bearing heavy burdens, whether you know them or not. You can greet family, friends, and strangers with a tender smile and a kind word, whether they smile back or not. If you are really filled with God's grace you can even pray for those who have hurt you or betrayed you with the words Jesus said on the cross: "Father, forgive them, they don't know what they're doing."
You help God when you hold a door open for someone. When you refuse to allow an argument to break a relationship. When you kiss your children and hold them tight. When you treat the gay couple holding hands with politeness. When you say a prayer for a refugee without a home. When you give away clothing that you no longer want or need. When you make a prayer shawl for an unknown person with cancer. When you care for abandoned animals. When you speak up against injustice. When you do these things, you have truly become God's Gift of Love Whom He can give to others as He gave away His only Son.
"Father," we can say, "Thank you for making me. Thank you for telling me that I am wonderful, that You love me faithfully, that I am Your gift to Yourself. Help me to stay close to you so that I will never be separated from You, that I will be an everlasting gift to You. May your Holy Spirit fill me with so much love that I can become a gift to others. Expand my heart so that I know that Your love in me will always be enough for me to share with whoever enters my life and for everyone throughout the world. Give me as a gift to others as You gave Your Son as a gift to me. Amen."