Take a step back for a moment. Forget about your daily routine for now. Don’t worry about what anyone else thinks of you. Don’t judge your life as it is at the moment. Take a deep breath and see yourself as you are.

You are amazing.

Yes, you.

You don’t hear that often. People don’t often call you amazing. They’re more likely to ignore or manipulate you or tell you that you’re lacking somehow. Don’t listen.

Never forget that you are amazing, just as you are.

And so is everyone else.

Each of us has God’s DNA _ love, compassion, creativity, laughter, the ability to choose _ woven deeply within us. It links us on the deepest level with the One who made us.

Just as each of us is the product of our parents’ intermingling of DNA, made up of the same stuff as them, so are we made of some of the same stuff as God. It’s our lineage, our family tree.

It’s also our calling.

The universe has been around for some 13.7 billion years or so, we’re told. It has expanded and changed and grown in an infinite number of ways, all without us. Here on our little speck of water and dust that we call Earth, so much has happened without our presence or awareness.

Dinosaurs came and went, the pyramids were built, great empires rose and fell. All of this happened without you and me around to witness or participate.

If we’re honest with ourselves, the truth is that none of us has to be here. Creation could have gone along for as long as it will without any of us being part of it. In an act of grace, that changed for each of us.

You and I have been invited to join the party at this time. We’ve hit the divine jackpot.

There’s much more. We’ve been encouraged and challenged to join in this ongoing act of creation, to become partners and co-creators with the One who made everything in one grand and joyous act of creativity.

It’s time to put ourselves fully into the divine party. And to make sure everyone else is fully welcomed, too.