There is nothing quite like the convention experience… and this year’s Orlando MegaCon was no exception. Fandoms are expressed as far as the eye can see as you wade through endless waves of amazing cosplay designs in search of celebrities to meet, artisans to purchase from, and activities to participate in. Every time I thought I had found the most impressive individual costume of the event I would run into another even MORE unbelievable variation on the theme. With the sheer amount of attendees of this event, it was inevitable that many of these characters would be replicated several times… we probably found several hundred Spider-Men, dozens of Mandalorians, and more Loki’s than you can shake a scepter at. And because of the tremendous passion around even the most niche fandom, individuals who labored for months on their unique costume would still eventually bump into more than one individual who created a very similar (and perhaps superior) work of wearable art. And while I am certain there is a level of excitement to finding a fellow fan who shares an identical interest in creating such a specific cosplay design, the reason most individuals share their labor of love at these events is because of their desire to show off their unique creation… and after bumping into the tenth person who had the exact same (and maybe visually superior) idea for their costume, it is easy to walk away feeling slightly less special than you did when you started.

It is incredibly easy for one costume to get lost in the massive multiversal sea of variants, all of which are carefully hand-crafted and beautifully unique… but can eventually start to blend in to the crowd of seemingly similar costumes. And many times in our real-world lives, a similar challenge comes to the surface as we attempt to find our place and determine our value on this planet. Of all of the billions of souls who have come before us as well as the multitude that will come after us, what makes each of us “special”? How important can ANYTHING that I am doing actually be if my life is just one grain of sand across an endless ocean of names and faces across the annals of time? Regardless of our status as an introvert or extrovert, we all want our lives to have a sense of importance that validates our existence… nobody wants to be Spider-Man number 856 out of 1,000. And in our search for significance, many times we place ourselves into the wrong hands in the hopes that our worth will finally be established… we search for our value in relationships with those who abuse the privilege and turn out to be untrustworthy, in an education that doesn’t result in the career that we had hoped for, in a career we invested into that ended in a painful layoff, or a multitude of other pursuits that promise possibility but end in disappointment. And in a world where our abilities of self-expression through the internet and social media are nearly limitless across the entire globe, depression is still somehow at an all time-high… so perhaps the problem is not on the outside, but on the inside.

As a collector of many “nerdy” things, a quick gaze across my collection would reveal a plethora of collectibles and figures that on first glance would appear to be very similar. To someone who doesn’t appreciate or share my same interests, they may even look completely identical… but I can know the differences between each and every one because I took the time to track them down, purchase them, and place them in the exact space in my collection that I have always wanted them in. That may look like just another Ahsoka pop to some… but I know that her lightsaber stance is different in every single one of them. Yes, it appears that those are all just a bunch of Starscream figures… but I know the story behind finding each and every one of them and they are all individually valuable to me, from the smallest ones to the largest and most visually impressive. I don’t own any of them by accident… and they are each precious to me for different reasons. Sure, some of them are a bit “battle-damaged” because the previous owner that I bought them from didn’t take care of them… but all I see is that I finally found the one I was searching for and each one occupies a special place no matter how much they may look the same to the untrained eye.

The truth is that in our search for significance we are all (myself included) guilty of looking for our love and acceptance in many of the wrong places… and the treatment we have received from those people or situations that abused our trust, treated us as an undervalued plaything, and damaged us in the process can leave us feeling broken and worthless. And despite all of the different options that exist to find our place in the pantheon of souls on this planet, even our very best efforts and intentions are ultimately misguided and can leave us feeling like “just another face in the crowd”… not because we lack value or that our gifts are of little importance, but because we are seeking our validation in the wrong place. The same way a figure in my collection was mistreated by some hands but truly appreciated in mine, only our Heavenly Father sees beyond the surface and into the unique, individual, one-of-a-kind soul that He personally crafted (Psalm 139:14-16) and sent His only Son to repurchase at the highest of costs (John 3:16-17). And all of our attempts to find our true value will always end in crushing disappointment… not because of our lack of worth, but because we are allowing untrained eyes and biased viewpoints to evaluate us.

The Lord sees each of His children as priceless beyond compare (Isaiah 43:4), even after our mistreatment by others or our seeming surface-level similarity to our brothers and sisters. Every “variant” is precious in His sight, a soul that compelled Him to seek out and save (Luke 19:10)… and it is ONLY in His hands that we find our authentic worth as a vessel that carries His very Spirit within us (2 Corinthians 1:22). No matter where we are in our current walk of faith, let’s remind ourselves that He is authentically and deeply interested and invested into EACH of our stories… and no matter how “nameless and faceless” we may feel like sometimes, in His eyes we are a soul that causes an incomparable celebration in heavenly places when we choose Him (Luke 15:7). There is not another soul like yours that has ever existed… He designed you and called you by name to Him (Ephesians 2:10, Isaiah 43:1). He loves us with an immeasurable love that refuses to allow us to remain in a broken or damaged state… that is why He sent His Son to reclaim us, cleanse us, and rebuild us into who we were always meant to be (John 3:16-17).

There will never be another you or me, and it is ONLY in the arms of Christ that we will ever know and feel the love we crave. Let’s look to our Creator and remind ourselves of His incomparable love for each of His children, and with thankful hearts receive His free gifts of cleansing and restoration as He wipes away each of our tears, breaks every one of our chains, and shatters all of the lies we were led to believe. He invites every one of His children to come as we are, but He loves us too much to let us remain what we were… and that is why He paid the price to purchase us and redeem us from the hands that didn’t appreciate us and a path that only leads to our destruction. And if we will yield ourselves to His loving guidance and direction, we will find the path and purpose we have been searching for… our place in the body of Christ using our unique and special gifts to shine His light in a world full of darkness searching for truth that cannot be found anywhere else.

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