Zip, Nada, Zilch, Zero

The other day as I was working in the office, I received an email. It had the appearance of being for me personally but I noticed very quickly that it was a form letter that had been sent to many people at the same time. I knew this because where “Joe” should have been it said “Null”. To be honest, when I read that I laughed a little bit because that little word is usually placed in a sentence with other little words when I describe that there is nothing there: like zip,nada, zilch and zero.

"Null is a special marker used in Structured Query Language (SQL) to indicate that a data value does not exist in the database."

Imagine that, no value. Joe doesn't exist in their database, Joe is “null”. 

It seems like many people in our country these days are so de-valued and unheard that they lash out in all types of harmful ways. Each of us wants to belong to something greater than ourselves. To be loved by someone other than ourselves. And to become all God said we could be. It’s in us from the very beginning and we spend most of our lives trying to make sure that we are seen, heard and understood. We want to be valued.

The Good News today is that we can have a personal relationship with someone who knows how many hairs you have on your head.(not difficult in my case) Someone who knows you are flawed and loves you unconditionally. Someone that not only calls you by name but wants to make certain that name is written down for all eternity. You are never “null”! You are ALL that and a bag of chips!