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Not pretty but rare!
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What do you have in common with a stamp?

The following comparison comes from Andi of Effringen, Germany.

There are many things to collect, e.g. stickers, number plates, crown corks, beer mats, ..., and of course, stamps. And there are, of course, albums for collecting stamps. The advantages of a collection album are obvious: You can keep all of stamps you collect in one place and sort them out and every single stamp is well protected.

When collecting stamps it is similar to collecting other things, you want to collect as many different ones as possible. I hardly believe that anyone collects the same stamps and lays them out neatly in their album. If two of the same stamps happen to be next to each other, maybe they will decide between the two from which one has been used or not. In a collector’s album, you will come across the most different stamps: large and small, beautiful and not so pretty stamps, stamped and non-stamped ones, whole series of stamps or individual ones. They all have different values which does not relate to the sum printed on the stamp itself.

There are many characteristics which might some hints, but they do not tell us how much the stamp is actually worth. The value of a stamp is always dependent on how many examples of the stamp will exist. That means that the more rare the stamp, the more valuable it is.

A stamp album shows us how God means us to be: God is a little bit like the collector. He does not collect us humans but he created every single one of us. Just like the stamps, which are protected in the album, we are protected in his hand. God holds the whole world in his hand!

There are many different humans, just like the stamps: There are fat ones and thin ones, old ones and young ones, there are beautiful ones and not so beautiful ones, there a group of people and single children. We seem to think that some of them are more valuable than others because they are particularly talented or famous. However all of these things do not tell us which value a person has for God, our creator! Just the like stamp, this is dependent on the number of pieces made of each person!

Might it be possible that God loves some people more than others? No, because he created each person individually, each one of us is unique and I would claim that God gives every one of the same value. Every person is equally loved by God, he does not differentiate between us! He showed us how much he loves us over 2000 years ago, when he gave his son for us all so that we have a path again and can find our way to him.

There is no greater love!