In his First Letter to the Corinthians St Paul affirms: God chose "what is weak by human reckoning".... "those who are nothing at all" (1Cor 1:27-28). Here he affirms the other side of the picture by making what will appear to many an extraordinary claim: "the life and death of each of us has its influence on others". For most of us ordinary people, this will seem hard to believe: we do not have any great influence on this world. The apparent contradiction with the text of Corinthians, however, reveals a great truth, for in Scripture the deepest truth is often to be discovered in apparent contradictions. Without God and without Jesus we are indeed nothing, but then, to us who are redeemed in Christ, God says to us what he once said to Israel: "you are precious in my eyes, you are honoured and I love you" (Isaiah 43:4). It is this honour and love from God which gives our lives and deaths an importance beyond all our dreams.