You bear the fingerprint of God because he made you and because he bought you.

In 2007 an anonymous Swiss collector purchased an old painting called Profile of the Bella Principessa for $19,000. It is about 9 by 13 inches and pictures the profile of a woman. To most of us that seems like a lot of money to pay for an old portrait of someone we don't know. But in the world of fine art, it's only a drop in the bucket. The collector bought the painting on a hunch that it might be one of the lost paintings of Leonardo da Vinci. For two years experts studied it for him. In the end the experts found a fingerprint in the corner of the painting that matched Leonardo da Vinci's fingerprint on his famous Saint Jerome painting at the Vatican.

Up until that time the portrait was presumed to be a 19th-century German work. New York art dealer Kate Ganz had owned it for 11 years after purchasing it at an auction for a similar price. Imagine her angst today! But for so long no one connected to the painting even suspected its true origin or imagined its worth. This painting is now worth more than $150 million all because of a fingerprint that marks it as the work of a master.

YOU ARE A WORK OF THE MASTER

Hmm. See any parallels? Every single one of us is the work of a master too. We may look common and drab and be considered so by others and ourselves. But it isn't true. We are not the scribbling of a third grader. We bear the fingerprint of God. Long ago David marveled at this truth when he wrote, "For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place" (Psalm 139:13-15).

God wants you to consider all the wonderful systems in your body and marvel at how perfectly he made you. He wants you to value your body just the way he does. He likes what he made. He wants you to like it too.

God also wants you to embrace your uniqueness. He doesn't want you to look or sound like anyone else. You are God's gift to this planet, with your unique features and characteristics. He wants you to feel that way too. I'm not telling you to be conceited, but I am encouraging you to accept yourself. The sooner we accept and praise the way God made us, the sooner we will have the impact he wants us to have. But if we spend time trying to be someone we're not, well, then we'll waste a lot of time spinning our wheels.

YOU WERE BOUGHT AT A HIGH PRICE

Do you know what else made that painting worth so much? People were willing to pay more than $150 million for it. Their willingness to pay that much gives it that value.