It’s so easy to stand, as just one individual, in the midst of this world filled with roughly 7,442 billion people and feel about as insignificant as a speck of dust. We fall into these traps that look at life falsely in the grand scheme of things. We begin to believe that we don’t matter, that we are insignificant, that we are small, that we are accidental- but that is anything but the truth.

Scientists estimate the probability of your being born at about one in 400 trillion. The probability of your parents' meeting is 1 in 20,000. The probability of your parents staying together long enough to have you is 1 in 2,000. The probability of you being successfully conceived is 1 in 400 quadrillion. The probability of all your ancestors reproducing successfully is that same number, 400 quadrillion, to the 150,000th power (That’s a ten followed by 2,640,000 zeroes). The odds that you exist are basically zero. You are one in 400 trillion. In just your simple and seemingly mundane existence, you are rather extraordinary.

Don’t you dare stand before me and try to tell me that you are anything short of a miracle. You stood before odds and numbers and chances that completely toppled over you, and you still prevailed because you had the God of the universe on your side. It is by absolutely no coincidence that you are where you are and that you are who you are. You have been in the making since before the beginning of time. You are composed of trillions of little decisions and details and miracles that all just happened to work together to create life. To create your life. To create you. Not by chance, but by divine appointment and by careful orchestration.

These numbers and odds that were completely destroyed, all point towards a purpose and a plan that is far greater than anything we could ever do or put together on our own. They point towards you and I being a significant part of God’s plan. You were chosen and planned to live in this world. Better yet, you were chosen and planned to have a specific purpose and impact on this world and on those around you.

The God of the entire universe pulled every string and orchestrated the events of time and space and man to cultivate an environment in which your existence was possible. One in 400 trillion. The great mystery of our existence stretches back in time into the very heart and mind of God who has always known and loved us, has prepared for us and made a way for us. You are wonderfully and fearfully made and God has done a marvelous thing in creating you.

It is easy to forget that God has destined each one of us to have a specific impact. He gave us the talents we have, allowed the experiences we went through, given us our family and friends, our hardships and shortcomings, our times of joy, times of sadness, and every single season of life- all to prepare us for the purpose we are here to fulfill.

Chosen. Let that be a banner over our lives and an anthem to live by for the rest of our days. Let us celebrate the very fact that we are living. Let us rejoice in the seemingly mundane yet beautiful truth that there is breath in our lungs and life in our souls. Everything orchestrated just perfectly to be here, to be now, to be us. Let us live life in light of how absolutely chosen and miraculous we are. Let us walk with great purpose that was instilled in us upon our very birth. Let us look upon life knowing that we are enough.